


The art of sham sacrifice

by apolitecactus



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blindness, F/M, Maes Hughes Lives, Moral Dilemmas, Politics, Post-Canon, Post-Promised Day, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Some Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26289955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolitecactus/pseuds/apolitecactus
Summary: “Lieutenant, are you still with me? Answer me!” Roy shouted, watching how the pool of Riza’s blood was expanding in front of his eyes.There was no answer. Uninvitedly, his mind was filling with the images of the red phone booth covered in blood the very day he was too late, too slow and too useless to help.Or a canon-divergent AU (careful, potential spoilers for the promised day ahead) where Roy Mustang agrees to perform the human transmutation on the Promised day because Hawkeye doesn’t wake up to convince him otherwise. Roy and Ed would need more time to recover from their injuries, but they may not have it: an anti-alchemist revolt is about to start in Central.
Relationships: Edward Elric & Maes Hughes, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	1. A royal fork

**Author's Note:**

> • “Sham sacrifice” – In chess, a player offering a “sham sacrifice” (i.e. giving away a figure) will soon regain material of the same or greater value, or else force mate. Coined by Rudolf Spielman, see more on [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_\(chess\))  
> • Spoilers for the Promised day in the text, be careful  
> • I am not a native English speaker, and I am looking for any way to improve. I’m open to any concrit.  
> • There will be weird humorous vignettes at the end of some chapters because I cannot stop thinking about the ways to combine FMA and other stuff that doesn't technically fit in this universe.
> 
> Chapter 1 summary: Royal fork refers to a move in chess where a figure attacks the queen and king at the same time. The player whose king is attacked will most likely lose the queen while defending the king. The vignette at the end: Park and Rec & FMA crossover with Ron Swanson instead of Grumman

Edward disappeared suddenly, taken away by those ghostly black hands.

_Was he dead? Was he sacrificed?_

No, no, no… Roy didn’t have any time to think about it – he had to fight two fuhrer candidates at once and keep an eye on that strange doctor with a golden tooth.

Then, he saw that _bastard_ wrestling Riza to the ground, holding her hand in such a way that it was about to break any moment.

“Let her go!” he shouted, losing focus on his own battle. They used that opportunity to gripple his hands. Next second, two rapid sword moves – Roy didn’t even see where those swords came from – and his gloves were gone. Scar was caught too, kept in place by those sharp swords.

They hit Riza once again with a sword sheath. Her head jerked back rapidly, she hit the ground, and then… she stopped moving altogether.

“Here we are, Colonel Mustang,” the doctor said. “I would like you to perform some human transmutation and open the portal for me.”

“No, not a chance,” Roy yelled in response while struggling out of the grasp of those fuhrer candidates holding him. “I won’t be your puppet.”

“I told you, we have run out of time,” the doctor said. Then, all Roy could see was blood.

Riza’s blood. She was already unconscious after the blow to her head, and now… Did they actually simply cut her throat? Just did it? Without even trying to negotiate or explain their plans? She was expendable to them, and if Roy could, he’d _eviscerate_ all of them, turn them in little pieces of ashes, he’d start with their eyes and tongues and mouths, and then…

Riza wasn’t moving.

“Lieutenant, are you still with me? Answer me!” Roy shouted, _uselessly_ watching how the pool of Riza’s blood was expanding in front of his eyes.

There was no answer.

“Now, perform the human transmutation and become the fifth sacrifice,” that doctor said once again.

That time, Roy couldn’t stop panicking.

What if… What if she was already dead? Her hand was stuck under her body in such an awkward, unnatural position, and she became so pale that he couldn’t believe that she wasn’t. Uninvitedly, his mind was filling with the images of the red phone booth covered in blood the very day he was too late, too slow and too _useless_ to help.

No, no, no…. She was under his direct order not to die.

Then, he saw a very subtle movement of her chest. She was breathing. He felt calmer once again, feeling how there was hope for her.

“I am able with all certainty to save this woman’s life,” the doctor said, showing a small vial with red liquid in it. Philosopher’s stone.

All he needed for her to live was to perform a human transmutation.

He knew that on the surface, the decision was simple. The doctor needed those sacrifices for an evil plan involving the death of all people in Amestris. Human transmutation couldn’t bring anyone back to life. He couldn’t trust the doctor to uphold his end of the deal. Most importantly, Riza would never agree to that. She wouldn’t ever forgive him for betting the lives of all people in Amestris for her single life.

But… He couldn’t take the right decision. Not when he was watching Riza slowly dying in front of him, the pool of her blood becoming bigger and bigger, and she herself looking like a lifeless doll that was accidentally dropped to the ground, spilt there in a lifeless shape. Maybe, if she was conscious and watched him taking the decision, he’d be able to choose what was right, but now… Now he wasn’t able to do anything else. For the life of it, he wasn’t able to forsake her to death.

He stopped struggling, feeling as defeated as never.

“You heal her first,” he said while his mind was filling with human transmutation formulas.

“I will but I can kill her anytime if you refuse,” the doctor said, and then there was a red flash. The wound on her throat started healing, but one of those Fuhrer candidates was still holding the sword next to her throat.

He slowly walked to the transmutation circle, trying not to notice the _glance_ that Scar was giving him, trying not to focus on the fact that he decided to knowingly betray everyone he wanted to protect. The human transmutation array itself was a simple one. It didn’t even refer to the matter to be manipulated, to the person to be returned from the dead – its only purpose was to perform a human transmutation, open what they called the “portal of Truth”.

Riza woke up when he was kneeling next to the array. He activated it, and the last thing he saw was her wide eyes watching the black hands taking him away.

Much, much later, he learned that just a second after his transmutation, Zampano, May, and Jerso came to rescue them.

-/

Roy found himself in an endless white space. There was nothing except for the enormous gates in front of him and a creature in front of those gates – a faceless figure, just a dark outline in the whiteness of everything around him.

“Strange, strange, strange,” the creature told him. “I’ve never met anyone here, who didn’t even know whom they wanted to transmute.”

“Human transmutation doesn’t work anyway, does it?” Roy asked even though he was sure of the answer.

The faceless figure smiled.

“You also didn’t offer me anything for the human transmutation. I miss my limes and thirty-five litres of water, you know?”

“Must be tough to survive on water and limes.” Roy smiled and sat in front of the creature. There wasn’t any need for him to go back just to be sacrificed. Or even worse – to explain to Riza why he did it. He could as well stay there. “You should convince alchemists that the human body consists of apple pies and quiches.”

Roy looked at the doors of the gates in front of him in curiosity. The image moulded on them was the same as the flame alchemy circle on Riza’s back.

“No, you cannot stay here, alchemist,” the creature said as if reading his thoughts. “And I’m not keeping you here just because you won’t say what you want to transmute. All transmutations come to an end.”

Roy sighed. Naively, he hoped that he could simply stay there for until the eclipse ends. Unfortunately, his only other option was worse. At least, he knew whom he wanted to save.

“Maes Hughes,” he breathed out, his heart fluttering with the stupid hope that he may actually revive Maes. “Take my whole body. My soul. My mind. Every single part of me. It’s an equivalent exchange, isn’t it?” He looked at the creature without hesitation. He didn’t need to survive to become the puppet of people who wanted to destroy his country. “Kill me, but bring him back to life.”

“I only take what’s due, alchemist.”

The doors opened, and those little hands took Roy away once again, and his mind exploded in its inability to grasp the knowledge spilling into it. Then the world around him went dark.

-/

“Colonel!!” he heard Fullmetal’s uncharacteristically panicked voice next to him. Then he felt _pain_. So much pain. He could barely locate it. Somewhere deep in his head, probably. He also smelled blood.

“I wish I could say that makes all five of the required sacrifices, but Alfonse Elric has not arrived yet,” an unfamiliar male voice said.

That meant… He didn’t succeed. That faceless creature in the gateway didn’t take away his life, and now he was just another _useless_ sacrifice for them.

“It can’t be…” Fullmetal was speaking again. “What the hell did they do to him? Is he alive? Colonel, say something!” Then Roy felt a trembling hand checking his pulse.

“Have him lie down,” he heard a female voice saying. “We need to dress up the wounds.”

He tried to open his eyes to see who was speaking, but somehow, that simple movement didn’t succeed. Then he remembered something.

“Is he…” he said, struggling to say anything in the pain encompassing him. “Is he alive?”

“Who?” Fullmetal was there again, and then there was the sound of clothes being torn, a clap and the ozone smell of alchemy. He felt a metallic hand wrapping something around his head.

“H… Hughes,” Roy said trying to look around.

Why couldn’t he see anything? Why was it so dark? Please, he needed the lights. He needed to _see_ if it worked.

“Hughes?!” He felt hands wrapping something around his head once again. “Lieutenant-Colonel… General Hughes? The bleeding doesn’t stop… What do we do?” that time, Ed was addressing someone else.

“Maes Hughes,” he tried once again, forgetting all the ranks of his friend in the haze of pain. Then he remembered something even worse. “Is Riza… Is Lieutenant Hawkeye alive?”

Something firmly pressed on his head, and the pain became worse. He screamed.

“Hold on, Colonel, please,” Fullmetal again. “Hughes… Lieutenant Hawkeye…. You performed it, didn’t you? Human transmutation?” There was so much accusation in that voice.

“Is he alive?” he asked once again, rotating his head and stupidly hoping to see Maes next to him.

“No. And you know that you can’t bring the dead back to life. Why on Earth _now_ , Colonel? Couldn’t you at least wait for after the Promised day?” Fullmetal was furious, and, frankly, Roy didn’t have an answer for that question.

Then the fight started.

Somehow, after he killed Lust, he thought that all fights with the homunculi would go like that – bloody and difficult, sure – but at least not too one-sided.

Oh, how he was mistaken.

He knew that Fullmetal and Al were fighting with the homunculus called Pride, the one who manipulated the shadows, and they couldn’t even hit the guy, whereas Pride hit them over and over again.

Roy tried to help, but there was no one to guide his alchemy, and he didn’t have his gloves on. All there was for him was to lie and listen to the fight around him, to the sounds of Pride beating Fullmetal into a pulp and to the screeching of Al’s armour being bent like a piece of paper.

“Stop for a minute, Pride,” the same male voice – the “Father”, right? – said. “I need them for the sacrifice.”

A body landed next to Roy, and he carefully moved in its direction. Closer examination revealed a metal arm.

“Fullmetal!” he said, barely containing panic. “FULLMETAL!” he screamed. He started shaking the body in front of him, feeling like he was about to become hysteric.

“’m fine,” he heard a very quiet voice, and he sighed in relief. Fullmetal was still alive.

Then, he was lifted in the air, and another voice started speaking about planets and powers of God, and he’d listen to it if he weren’t so worried about what it meant.

They didn’t win. That “Father” needed five sacrifices, and he received all of them, delivered to him on a plate. Now, he was speaking of collecting the souls of all the people in Amestris, and that was no less than fifteen million people. Including Riza. Roy made everything worse by exchanging a half an hour of her life for the lives of fifteen million people.

When he was thrown back to the ground, he welcomed the darkness that claimed him, hoping that his soul too would be taken for those evil plans. He didn’t deserve anything beyond that.

He must have been unconscious for some time, because then he didn’t hear the sounds of a fight and instead, there was… Riza’s voice. She was screaming for him, sounding afraid and, most importantly, alive.

Thank God, she was alive. He didn’t know how, but it looked like the “Father’s” plan didn’t fully succeed.

He stood up and cautiously made a few steps in her direction. Thankfully, her hands found him.

“Your head…” her voice was quiet and lifeless, like she was about to cry. “What was the toll?”

“Eyes, apparently. That’s what I can deduct from not seeing anything around me,” he grinned cheerfully, finding strange solace in talking about it, and then schooled his expression into serious once again. “How are your injuries, Lieutenant?”

“Fine, Sir,” she answered in the same lifeless tone.

He learned quickly that the battle was still continuing, and that the “Father” guy was still undefeated. Everyone else was heading for the battle, and he decided that he needed to help too. He wasn’t going to stay away, especially, since Fullmetal was still fighting Pride.

Riza agreed to help him. While being led to the battle, he felt the _extent_ of her anger at him – her usually gentle grasp on his shoulder was firm and painful. She didn’t speak more than she needed to, even though she had to know that he needed to hear her voice in the chaos of the battle around him. She was there for him, and, at the same time, somehow wasn’t.

That was why he focused on the battle around him, feeling satisfied with the idea that he could eviscerate whoever was responsible for the wrong choice that he had to make that day. Because they were practically _killing_ Fullmetal next to him, and he couldn’t do anything to help. For the way Riza was holding him now, firm and _unforgiving_. For the way he needed someone to guide him to make a simple step, and the pain he felt all the time since he woke up. The fires surrounded him, feeling like a continuation of his own soul, and his soul wanted to destroy _everything_.

He snapped and snapped and snapped, and the fires were hitting the target that Riza was directing him at. He felt like he was a great help on the battlefield, and that was why he didn’t really want to oblige when Riza asked him to keep it down, to use weaker blasts.

“Sir, please, the shields of our soldiers won’t hold up against your fires,” she was pleading. He could also feel her grip on his shoulder weakening. Was she thinking about leaving him there, without her guidance, not able to fight? Weak and _useless_?

He snapped again, despite her pleadings, and that time, the fire pillar was even taller, hotter, stronger – he smiled, since he had never created something that strong. Maybe the knowledge from the gate was helping? He was sure though that the fury that was encompassing him was responsible for the strength of those fires. He manipulated the fire to hit the target and it did – perfectly precise, like all his fires were – and then he heard someone wailing in pain.

The scream wasn’t coming from the creature he wanted to eviscerate.

He staggered, putting out all the fires around him, leaning on Riza to keep standing. He heard someone else running into the battlefield and continuing the fight with the “Father”.

“Is it?” he asked quietly, knowing the answer full well. “Did I injure someone?”

He couldn’t stand anymore, and Riza helped him to sit down. The wailing stopped abruptly.

“Looks like his shield didn’t hold, Sir,” she said, and then he felt her hands tugging his gloves, slowly removing them. “They are helping him… He’s not dead. You have to rest, Sir.”

He nodded, allowing her to drag him away from the battle. The battle continued around them, and he didn’t try to help anymore.

-/

**Vignette 1 – Park and Rec & FMA crossover, Roy Swanson instead of Grumman, Ed and Roy, 190 words**

“Sir, we’re sorry about the… unforeseen consequences of this mission,” Roy said, thinking about the ways to spin those “consequences” into something positive. He needed to start on a good note with their new chef – a civilian manager called Ron Swanson – but that last joint mission with Ed certainly wasn’t a good fit for it.

“You destroyed a tax collection bureau and burned all the records?” Swanson said, giggling somewhat happily. “And a mayor’s office? And all of it in a mission where you simply had to retrieve a lost letter? That’s what I expect from my employees – and that’s why child labour laws would ruin this country. Well done, Ed!”

Ron Swanson stood up and patted Ed on the back, and then looked at Roy.

“You both are my most valuable employees. You, Mustang, for instance – you don’t do a lot of work around here, spend all your time teaching dogs new tricks, slagging off your reports, and planning a coup against the government,” Swanson looked at Ed and Roy cheerfully. “Your next joint mission would be to go to the Amestris Safety Standards Office and retrieve a letter from _there_.”


	2. Underpromoted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In chess, a pawn reaching the eighth rank has to be replaced by another figure. Usually, players promote to a queen – the strongest figure in chess. Underpromotion, in this case, refers to the choice to promote the pawn to a weaker figure than the queen, such as knight, bishop or a rook. Sometimes underpromotion is a brilliant move, but most of the times it’s your 4-years old opponent showing off after getting the fourth pawn to promote (no, that never happened, and I’ll never admit to that happening).
> 
> Or Roy and Riza cannot decide who is more to blame.
> 
> See notes at the end to find a fanart illustrating this chapter

Ed suddenly jerked out of sleep, like he always did when he saw a bad dream. That wasn’t a bad dream though. The pain was real.

The last thing he remembered was the fight with Selim Bradley. Pride as the little bastard liked to call himself. The bastard had been strong, and whatever Ed had tried to do, his attacks hadn’t seemed to have any effect. Pride had been somewhat weakened by the sheer persistence of Ed’s attacks – at least that Ed was able to infer from the way the skin on Pride’s cheek had started falling apart at the end of their fight, but Pride hadn’t been defeated the last Ed remembered.

Ed sat up a little bit – the pain jolted somewhere in his torso – and looked at his body. Everywhere he could see, there were bandages and needles.

Ugh, needles.

He removed one needle and tried to reach another one in his shoulder when he caught a glimpse of something metallic next to him. He turned in its direction and realized that it was Al.

There was something strange about the way Al was leaning against the wall. As if someone had brought him there and left like a bunch of metal scraps, and since then, Al hadn’t moved to a more comfortable pose. Or moved at all.

His body didn’t even look like an armour anymore. The arms and legs were completely gone, and everywhere else, pieces were missing.

“Al,” he said cautiously, realizing that he didn’t see the soulfire eyes inside the helmet. “Al!” he practically wailed, hearing no response.

He dragged himself out of bed, pulling out all the needles at once, not paying any attention to the pain filling him, and slowly crawled to Al. He felt the smell of blood in the air – his wounds must have opened – but he didn’t care.

“Al,” he said once again, hoping for any response. Anything, please. He touched Al’s hand, and when there was no reaction at all, he started shaking Al, violently, as if his life depended on the force of it.

He heard the door opening behind him and then felt hands dragging him away from Al, but all he needed was at least a movement, anything – anything from Al.

_Please, it couldn’t be._

He still had been fighting Pride when Al had left to fight with the Father. What if… What if the Father had killed Al?

“Let me see!” he screamed, jerking his way out of the hands dragging him back to the bed. “Inside the helmet, please!”

They didn’t listen to him. They put him back, listing some jargons about the heart rate and then pricked him with even more needles.

“LET ME SEE!” he screamed, struggling as much as he could. He must have hit a few of those nurses, and they deserved it. Then, he clapped his hands together, deciding to simply fight them off with a weapon.

“Brother?” he heard behind him.

“Al?” he yelled, looking in the direction of the armour. Why couldn’t he see the eyes inside of it? What if Al’s eyes were also taken away, just like Mustang’s?

“On the left from you,” he heard the voice; he looked and saw his brother. Or to be correct, he saw Al in his own body. As thin as he was on the other side of the gate, but that was unmistakably Al, back as he had been before they had decided to perform the human transmutation.

Now, he realized that nothing happened after he clapped. He smiled and stopped struggling, allowing the nurses to put all those needles back.

“I remember thinking about the toll, but I don’t remember doing it at all,” he said, feeling an overwhelming relief filling him whole, tightness in his chest growing larger at the sight of his little brother as he was, as he was supposed to be. It was all over – all their struggles, misadventures, quests… He wished he could touch Al, check if any of it was real or he was still dreaming, a sweet nice dream coming after a nightmare.

“Brother!” Al said a bit louder, his voice cracking from the effort he was putting into it. “It was stupid, and now you can’t even remember it. I thought you were dead, Ed! There was so much blood, and your leg…” Al’s breathing hitched, and Ed decided to use the pause to steer the conversation in a different direction.

“Yeah, whatever.” Ed waved his hand dismissively. Even that simple movement was very painful. “Then I just saved you, didn’t I? Now I remember how the Truth looked like when I appeared in front of him. He was completely surprised, you know?”

“I actually thought you were dead,” Al’s voice was very quiet now, almost impossible to hear. “They were reanimating you, and I couldn’t do anything to help. Then you woke up and clapped your hands, and it’s only now when you’re waking up, Ed! Doctors said you may not…” Al’s voice trailed off, but from the tone alone, Ed realized how terrified Al must have been for him. Somehow, Ed didn’t want to see the look of terror on Al’s face. Instead, he started poking on his needles again. Some of them were probably unnecessary, and the fewer needles there were in his body, the better.

“What was the toll?” he heard Al’s voice once again. That time, Al was sounding mournful. “You clearly can hear and see, and you don’t miss any of your limbs. Was it a part of your brain? That’s why you can’t even remember doing it?”

“What? Al, no! I’m not that stupid!”

“We agreed that you will call for us or run away if you’re badly injured. So yes, all of it was stupid. Tell. Me. What. Was. The. Toll.”

Now, Al was actually angry. Thankfully, he wasn’t in the armour anymore, or Ed wouldn’t ever survive his fury. Angry Al was like Winry seeing her automail destroyed but hundred times more vicious.

“It’s my gate. So no, not a part of my brain, not my limbs or anything. It’s all fine, Al.”

“That’s why it didn’t work just now!” Al said, sounding as if he just solved a puzzle. “It still was stupid, Ed. What if the Truth wanted to take something else? What if you were too weak to survive it? What if someone attacks us now? I could have survived in my armour just fine, Ed!”

“But you weren’t just fine! You were drifting away all the time. And why are you so concerned about our safety now? If we’re alive now, then the bad guys lost, right?”

Al sat up in his bed just a little bit and looked at Ed with determination in his gaze.

“I don’t want to see you _not breathing_ ever again, brother. I’ll protect you now, whatever it’ll cost me. And, if I think you need alchemy back to not ever be injured like this again, then I’ll give my body back to the Truth.”

“But… No, Al, your body is more important than my alchemy!” Ed said, his voice breaking into a higher pitch. It didn’t make any sense now, the way Al was talking about his safety. The obsessiveness in his voice was just too much.

“You’re my brother, Ed,” Al said then more calmly, probably realizing that Ed didn’t like the way he was speaking. “I just want to protect you, that’s all.”

Ed simply nodded and decided not to continue that discussion further. Clearly, when his brother would see him getting better and no one else ever threatening Ed, he’d become less concerned about his safety and the lack of alchemy.

He decided to keep the needles where they were – to heal faster and show his brother that he could survive without the alchemy just fine.

-/

Someone was speaking to him.

Roy turned his head in the direction of the voice.

Was it Breda?

Roy didn’t really know – he was pumped with painkillers. He had also survived a blood transfusion and, apparently, a short operation, akin to an amputation, as they had explained to him, but on his eye sockets. Doctors had said that his wounds would heal perfectly, and he’d survive all of it. Now, however, he felt absolutely terrible.

“Sir, you have to listen to that.”

Yes, it was Breda.

Roy nodded and then showed in the direction where he thought his IV was.

“Can you remove the needle, please?”

The painkillers were nice but he couldn’t focus on anything right now. He felt the needle slipping out of his vein.

“Sir, it’s all over the radio – the broadcast will start again now.”

Roy felt a heavy “thump” next to him and then, from the sound of it, Breda was manipulating buttons on something.

“Listen, now!” Breda said, sounding impatient.

“Attention, this is Radio Capital speaking!” the familiar voice of the evening news announcer was saying. “Today, General Armstrong has taken control of Central command and successfully halted the experiment conducted by the alchemists in Central. The experiment was centred around an alchemic procedure that would have sacrificed the nation’s population. Details of the experiment are yet to be released. Our Fuhrer, King Bradley tragically lost his life amid the day’s turmoil. We also regret to inform that Captain Buccaneer, the hero of the battle of Drillsk, was killed today. He was protecting his fellow soldiers against a traitorous attack...”

“See, Colonel!” Breda said, sounding furious, while the radio was listing various achievements of Captain Buccaneer. “They didn’t even say _your name_! They just came into the broadcast room with their _tanks_ , and we couldn’t do anything to stop them… They didn’t even want to listen to us. I asked them to include your name, repeatedly. I swear I didn’t want to give them the mic… If only you allowed us to attack the Northerners, Sir!”

Roy frowned. That was to be expected. He wasn’t there himself, and General Armstrong wasn’t the one to listen to the advice from people whom she didn’t know. Besides, she didn’t need anyone to know that he helped, considering they both aimed for the Fuhrership.

“That… Woman. If I could only….” Breda said, and Roy could feel that Breda barely contained the urge to add a few swearwords.

Roy raised his hand, indicating that he wanted to speak.

“Why did they say that alchemists were responsible?” He frowned. “Come on, Breda, you had _one_ job. Why on Earth did you make it all about my name?”

“Sir, but… it’s your goal. People in Amestris should know…”

Roy interrupted him.

“Really, Breda?! People are going to _revolt_ now. You know how many people _hated_ alchemists before. Now, if they think that alchemists were responsible, they won’t just sit idly by…”

“But Sir, what else was she supposed to say?” Breda sounded panicked. “She is one of the top-brass now, so she couldn’t just say that the Central command itself started all of it. She wouldn’t shoot herself in the leg.”

“You had to explain it to her!” Roy started shouting. “It’s not about my name, it’s not even about her being a general in Central… It’s about all those little kids who just started learning alchemy. It’s about those old ladies who were researching all their lives, trying to alchemize an ice cream out of soya beans. For God’s sake, of course, she’d broadcast something else if she knew, she is not that self-obsessed. That’s bigger than she and I….”

“But… Sir, it’s not that bad, is it? I mean, there’re certainly stereotypes and stuff but people don’t really hate alchemists. Who on Earth would start a revolt because of this one phrase?”

Roy shook his head and smiled.

“You and she wouldn’t know.” He sighed, realizing that he was the one who would know – the one with connections in Central and the knowledge of what people on the ground were thinking – and he had to think of it in advance rather than hope that Armstrong would come up with a nice explanation of what had happened. Breda was the last person to blame for that mishap. He smiled and tried to sound a bit more cheerfully. “Anyway, I think we’ll find a way to deal with the revolt. And it’s not your fault for not informing Armstrong, I had to the speech myself…”

That was when he heard the door being opened. Then, a few light steps. He’d recognize those steps anywhere. Riza. He smiled, forgetting about all the worries of that day, about the revolt that was bound to happen, about the darkness that surrounded him. He had been afraid that she wouldn’t come at all.

“Am I interrupting?” she asked and her voice was so quiet, small, and defeated, that Roy’s breathing hitched.

“I will be back later, Sir,” Breda said, and then Roy heard the door being opened and closed once again.

Then, there was silence.

An uncomfortable one and even more so, now, when he didn’t have any other ways to learn about the world around him. He shifted in his bed, trying to focus enough to hear her breathing – didn’t really work out – and to distance himself from the agony that was claiming him now, once the painkillers were wearing off.

He felt something touching his hand, something light. A paper? Then, a pen landed into his other hand. He moved his hand over the paper, sensing that there were words written all over it.

“You know, I cannot read reports now.” He grinned. “Finally, I don’t have to sign all this boring paperwork. I had to perform a human transmutation at least 15 years ago, you know?”

“You have to sign this one, Sir,” she said somewhere close to him. “This is my resignation letter.”

“What?” He shook his head and smiled once again. “No, I’m not signing this. We cannot give up so easily, and now it’s you who has to become the Fuhrer. I’ll help you as much as I can… I have to retire probably, but the goal is bigger than both of us. We don’t get to stop because of my eyesight, right?” somewhere in the middle of that speech he realized that he was practically pleading her. He wasn’t fit to be the Fuhrer now, and he didn’t know of any ways to restore his eyesight. He didn’t deserve to, either… The only remaining option was for her to follow through on their goal, and if General Armstrong was aiming for the Fuhrership with all her headstrong strategizing, Riza could too. And she would be damn good at that.

“Sir,” she said once again, in her small defeated tone. “Don’t discount yourself so easily. I know that you will survive this and reach your goal. You just have to do it without me.”

He wanted to say something but all words suddenly left him. She couldn’t just leave him like that.

“Your injury, Sir… It’s my fault,” she said, and her hands gently touched the bandage around his head. “I knew that you were unhealthily attached to me, and I didn’t do anything about it. The decision that you took today… I knew that they wanted to use me to manipulate you, and I had to know that they’d do something like that to you, but still, I was egoistic enough not to stop our relationship.”

He caught her hand with his own fingers, somewhere next to his face. Suddenly, he _needed_ to know how her hand looked like. What was the shape of the lines on the palm? Were there scars? Little wrinkles? Calluses? Was the index finger longer than the ring finger? He didn’t know, even though he saw those hands every single day for the last few years. He had kissed them and sucked those little fingers, and tried the bitter taste of gunpowder on her skin, and guided them when he had taught her how to play chess, and had been guided by them when she had been teaching him how to manage handgun recoil, and consoled by them when the homunculi had just killed Maes, and he had been absolutely defeated and drunk, and probably crying – he couldn’t remember those shameful moments anymore either.

And now, he didn’t have any single clue – he simply didn’t know how her hands looked like.

She pulled her hand out of his grasp and continued speaking.

“Sir, this relationship is dangerous for you. Someone can use me for the same purpose again.”

“It doesn’t really matter now.” He laughed bitterly. “What on Earth could they threaten me into now? Reading a Braille book? Finding a way to toilet with a cane? See, I cannot even do _that_ now.”

“You’ll learn and adapt. Sir, there were seventy-one soldiers killed in Central today. Two hundred seventeen injured. There are reports of people all over the country who lost consciousness in an unlucky situation. At least fifteen people drowned. Seventeen…”

Roy detached himself from those dry numbers. He tried to convince himself that those people weren’t dead or injured because of him. There had been evil forces that had been actively planning and doing it, and all he had done was assist them in a small part of their plan. He had done a terrible thing, but he wasn’t personally responsible. The argument didn’t work, however he tried to spin it and persuade himself. Then, there was also at least one soldier he had injured personally – the last he heard, still on the operation table, with horrible burns on his arms.

“And it’s all my fault, Sir,” Riza finished her report in the same dry tone even though he felt that her hand – once again on his bandage as if asking forgiveness for it – was trembling.

“It’s not... You and I both know that I’m responsible,” he stammered which hadn’t ever happened to him before. “This is the definition of stepping out of the path, isn’t it? You wanted to kill me over this homunculus today…” he took a deep, hitched breath because he was afraid of the thing that had to happen. Whatever he felt now, he didn’t want to die. “You have to do it then. It’ll also solve this whole dangerous relationship issue, wouldn’t it?”

“I won’t kill you, Sir. Ever. Our pact was bullshit,” she said without missing a beat. “And you didn’t step out of the path today, Sir. It’s me who failed you. I had to watch your back and I had to watch for all threats in your life, and I failed for the very reason that I wanted to continue this self-indulgent relationship. I simply cannot make the right decision when it’s you, Sir.”

She sat next to him and then simply tucked her head into his shoulder, and he stopped breathing, paralyzed by the fact that she suddenly became so intimate – out in the open where nurses could see them – and also by the meaning of that simple movement. That was her goodbye, a final, intimate touch that she was gifting him before leaving him once and for all.

“Just imagine how your life would be like if we never knew each other, Sir. Or if I never had loved you… I wouldn’t have given you the flame alchemy secrets, and maybe, you wouldn’t have been sent to Ishval.”

“Lieutenant, no…” he said, pulling himself out of that paralysis, but she continued speaking to somewhere in his shoulder, quietly, her lips almost touching him.

“Just imagine what it would have been like… You’d probably have more time then, and you’d known about alchemists in Ishval before applying for the exam. Just a year would have made so much difference.”

“Riza,” he said once again, trying to stop her, trying not to hear all those things that she apparently still blamed herself for.

“And today, you wouldn’t have made that decision.”

He felt a drop falling on his hand, and his heart skipped a beat because his Riza – the strongest person he ever knew – she couldn’t be crying. She was not. She would never.

“Just imagine if you had been taught by a different master…” a barely contained sob. “Or if you hadn’t stayed with me when I came back from the market that day… Or if you hadn’t arranged the funeral… Or if I were just a little bit stronger, and I’d stop…” she was speaking fast as if remembering all of it at once, as if regretting every single little moment that inadvertently led to them developing those feelings for each other.

“No…” He viciously shook his head. “It’s all false, Riza... You don’t get to blame yourself for the choices that I _personally_ took. It was my decision today, I wasn’t blinded by the way they threatened you, it’s not like I didn’t think rationally. I knew about all the consequences, I knew that I was assisting them in their plan, that I was betraying everyone…”

“But Sir!” she said, and the gentle touch of her head on his shoulder disappeared.

“Just listen,” he said and carefully found her hand with his, squeezed it. “Every single decision regarding flame alchemy I took _myself_. You can blame yourself only for trusting me, but not for the way my life turned after I learned flame alchemy. Me meeting you, us falling in love,” he smiled because that was the first time he ever referred to whatever they had as “love”, and it was ironic that he got to confess at the moment when there was no way for them to be together anymore, “are things that you cannot _logically_ blame yourself for. There’s a difference between a decision – like the one I took today – and something that you don’t have any choice in. I personally have never been given an option of not loving you, Riza.”

She was still silent, only her hand in his trembled a little bit, so he continued speaking.

“You can say whatever you want. That our relationship is unhealthy, that the pact was bullshit and all the other things you like. You can retire and you can leave me, I won’t stop you. Do whatever you want.”

She was so close to him, the intoxicating smell of gunpowder – of her – was filling him.

“But don’t you even dare blame yourself for all the stupid decisions I took,” he said with conviction in his tone. “Please, Riza.” He sighed. “Please, don’t blame yourself. I won’t survive this if you do.”

There was silence once again, and he was afraid of whatever she had to answer. If only he could open her head and take all that stupid guilt out of it, he’d do it in no time.

She stood up and the document with the pen landed in his hands once again.

“Then let’s say I retire not because of my guilt,” she said, dryly, as if they haven’t had that intimate conversation just now. “Let’s say it’s a family matter. Please, sign the document, Sir.”

“You don’t have to leave the military because of me, Riza,” he said, still insisting on calling her that. “You can transfer anywhere else, I won’t even meet you ever again. Don’t destroy what you achieved because of me.”

He didn’t need to hear her answer because he knew that she wouldn’t change her decision, and it was all over, completely over the second he had been presented with that impossible choice. Or maybe even earlier, when he had decided to stop caring about fraternization laws – not that he had really cared about them before that – and had asked her for a date. Now, the very thing the fraternization laws were designed to prevent was happening. She was leaving the military because she felt that it was unsafe for her and him to be there at the same time. That was unspoken between them, the one additional thing he was _truly_ to blame for.

He signed the letter, guided by her hand – and that little touch made him already miss her, even when she was still there.

-/

Adalbert had been working at that cemetery as long as he could remember. His father had been working there too, and so had the father of his father. He had helped them when he had been young, and now he was digging the graves and bringing flowers to neglected tombstones of some long-forgotten generals all by himself. The work was easy most of the times, but not, of course, on that day.

He had to dig seventy-one fresh graves following what the news called an attack by “alchemists”.

 _Those alchemists. Those baby-eating monsters. Those witches._ Not only did they do all that mambo-jumbo with elements, creating something out of the thin air, they also _slaughtered_ seventy-one innocent soldiers that very day.

“Move, you useless pigs,” he shouted, directing the soldiers who were sent to help him.

That was when he heard a soldier screaming in fear. He ran in the direction of the scream – how bad could those soldiers be? – and saw that the soldier was standing next to a tombstone of a general who had died last fall.

“I’ve heard a voice,” the soldier said, pointing in the direction of the ground. “It’s there, underneath us…”

“I swear, I’ve heard the voice too. And knocking,” another soldier said in the same terrified tone.

“Weaklings! You’re all god-forsaken weaklings!” Adalbert yelled, pointing his fingers on all those soldiers who surrounded him. “How on Earth could there be a voice? Look at the earth there! No one dig that grave out. Or do you think someone built a tunnel to the cemetery to make you all shit your diapers?”

“I’ve heard the voice too,” the third soldier was saying now. “Sir, if you allow, can we dig out that grave?”

He laughed. Those babies were hopeless.

“Do what you want,” he said. “I’ll watch you all trying to dig out a grave to find a mole or that you are all hallucinating.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Link](https://64.media.tumblr.com/9065798b397e4f06c2a8f8240c2f5bc4/bc5b8c9866f10107-3a/s2048x3072/4bc6fdb5221cfc56f2f58d9d9593bf7c1dd8695f.jpg) to the promised fanart for anyone interested
> 
> Thank you so much for reading this!  
> I really like the chess thesaurus that I looted for the chapter names. I never paid any attention to chapter names in fiction before but now I see its use. In this case, I like how "underpromotion" can refer to multiple things in this chapter, from losing alchemic powers to losing a "queen".  
> Anyway, the next chapter will explore the anti-alchemist side a little bit more and there will be some more angsty angst. I want to post it in two weeks and stick to posting every two weeks after that.


	3. Castling out of checkmate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary of the chapter: In chess, castling is a move when the king can ‘jump over’ the rook. This move is very special and can be done only once in a game, and there are also a bunch of other rules concerning this move. Castling out of a checkmate wouldn’t be allowed by chess rules, so in reality, the game would end when the only remaining option is castling.  
> Vignette at the end: Olivier Armstrong / Mary Sue, fluff

Ian didn’t really know why he suggested to dig out the grave of that general. Probably, out of compassion to Stefan. Poor guy – he was sweating all the time because it was a _cemetery_ , and he was panically afraid of _ghosts_ of all things. Ian himself suspected that the strange voice underground was probably caused by currents or maybe lava, or whatever else happened to be underground, but he needed to dig it out to show Stefan that there wasn’t anything to be afraid of. Real people were the monsters, not some dead bodies.

He looked at the tombstone in front of him. A guy named “Hughes”, died last year and was promoted to the general posthumously. 

Was digging out someone’s grave to check its content considered a desecration of a burial? He shrugged and picked up the shovel with the large metallic blade just to be quickly over with all of it.

The casket wasn’t very deep underground. It took Ian only a few minutes to reach the surface, but when he reached it, he stopped breathing, feeling every hair on his arms standing – all because now, he could discern the words.

“Anyone, help!” the voice from the casket yelled and then there was a quick knock from the other side of the casket.

Ian dug out the rest of the grave frantically, almost not feeling his hands from the way he was squeezing the shovel, and then he climbed out of the grave, hoping that whatever he had heard just now, was not real. Back on the ground, however, he saw pale faces of other soldiers on the cemetery, and from their expressions alone, he knew right away that they heard it too.

“Let me out, please! Just let me out, and I promise, I won’t tell anyone,” the voice said a bit quieter, sounding desperate.

Ian could feel sweat dripping down his chin. It didn’t look like the coffin had been opened before. It didn’t look either like someone ever had dug it out… But then how could there be a voice coming from the casket?

Or was it done by one of those bloody alchemists who came to Central and killed so many soldiers and conducted experiments on people? Those alchemists sure could do that to people, couldn’t they?

Ian braved to open the casket himself. Sure, whatever was there couldn’t be worse than what he saw in Central Command that day.

He carefully removed the lid and coughed, feeling the sickening smell of rote filling the air. Then, he saw him.

A man. Lying there, also coughing, – and _alive_.

“Oh, for God’s sake, I thought the air will run out,” the man said with barely concealed accusation in his tone. 

An eerie silence settled around them.

“Oh God, where am I?” the man asked. The man sat up and started looking around, squinting. He looked at Ian - his gaze lingered on Ian’s uniform - and he became visibly less afraid.

“In the grave, Sir,” Ian answered first because everyone else seemed to lose their ability to speak at the sight of the man. “It’s General Hughes’ grave, Sir.”

The coffin was as untouched from the inside, as it was from the outside. There was no way anyone could have done that to that man without some sick magic or alchemy.

Then, he noticed that the man had a General’s uniform on him, and the uniform smelled rotten.

“General Hughes?” the man smiled and looked at the soldiers around and on Ian once again, as if confirming that they were soldiers. “Is this a prank? Though that’s a bit too much for a prank. General Hughes, right. I’m just a Lieutenant-Colonel. Who on earth would think up a new title to bury me in a grave for a prank?”

Ian swallowed in apprehension. The tombstone said that the guy was promoted from Lieutenant-Colonel to a General posthumously.

The man carefully stood up in the grave, watching everyone gathered there with caution.

“That’s him,” Ian heard Stefan saying. “That’s General Hughes – I work next to the Investigations!” Stefan sounded as if he was about to faint.

“Of course that’s me,” the man said, “Stefan? Stefan, is it you? What are you doing here?”

With help from other soldiers, the man climbed out of the grave. Once on the surface, the man looked at the cemetery around him, and then at the tombstone. He had to move very closely to it to read it, but then, once he read it, he stepped out, staggered, and almost fell on the ground.

“But that’s me,” the man said, his voice trembling. “That’s me… I’m not dead! That’s too sick for a prank,” he started looking around with even more caution. “Is this… Is this some kind of a cult? Do you sacrifice people by putting them in graves? And putting fucking tombstones for them?”

“We only put corpses in the graves,” the graveyard keeper said grimly. “It’s a military cemetery, not some playground for your stupid alchemic pranks.”

The man looked at the graveyard keeper with disbelief. Then, he straightened as if remembering something.

“Alchemy…” the man started speaking faster. “I have information of extreme importance. It’s a matter of life or death! Phone! I need a phone, please!”

Graveyard keeper sneered at the sight of that. “All right, I had enough of this theatre. You…” Ian looked around and then realized that the graveyard keeper was pointing at him. “Boy, go pitch this idiot a phone. And call the MPs while you are at it. Put it this way - desecrating a burial of a general who was killed in action. Right? Say alchemists did it.”

Ian nodded and proceeded to escort that strange man to the graveyard keeper’s office. The man didn’t look like he trusted Ian, but he probably didn’t have any choice, being surrounded by all those soldiers with shovels.

“Here, Sir,” Ian said, pointing at the large phone apparat in the middle of the office. Only then he realized that he probably should have called the MPs first. He was simply so stunned by the whole experience of digging a breathing living person out of the grave, that he didn’t find it in himself to tell about it to someone else. The MPs wouldn’t believe him anyway.

The man squinted and then slowly dialled an East-city number.

Whoever was on the other side wasn’t answering for a long time, so the man started looking in his pockets. There was a photo in one of them – of a small smiling girl with cute ponytails. The man smiled and put it back. The East city number didn’t answer, so the man dialled another one, looking impatient. That time, someone answered.

“I need Colonel Roy Mustang. It’s an emergency!” the man said, and then sighed when he heard the answer. He started speaking quietly, certainly trying for Ian not to hear what he was saying. Ian could hear some of it anyway. “..ode: Uncle, Sugar …. Zero, Zero.”

“In Central Hospital??” the man shouted after hearing the answer. “When did he? How did he…”

After saying something else, he hung the phone up, looking grim and determined.

“Need to go. Thanks for the phone, bud.”

Ian felt a pat on his back, and then the man left. Ian was so terrified that he didn’t even have it in him to stop the man or arrest him for desecrating the grave of a general.

In a few minutes, Stefan ran into the office.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Ian said, and now he felt like he was about to cry. That very day, he had to fight some absolute monsters in Central. Then, he had been sent to dig graves for all his fallen comrades, and he hadn’t even had time to change his uniform or pick up lunch before he had been sent to the cemetery. He still had some blood on his uniform, and he didn’t even know if it was his or someone else’s. Now that prank was just too much.

“I’m absolutely certain it’s Maes Hughes,” Stefan said. “He looks exactly the same! I wish it was him because it was such a bummer when they killed him… He was such a sweet guy. He always showed photos of his daughter, and it was so annoying at that time. But you know, now I miss seeing those cute ponytails…”

Ian breathed out, feeling the new kind of fear filling him – that time, the fear of supernatural.

How could it be?

The guy looked at that photo of that girl with ponytails, recognized it and _smiled_.

Was he actually brought back to life?!

* * *

Roy woke up in the middle of the night because of his own scream. The room was filled with the smell of burning flesh. It was everywhere, permeating his bed lining, soaking his body with it. When the nurses came, they thought that he had a heart attack, so fast his heart was beating.

“Just. P-panic,” he managed to say trying to avoid the cold touch of a stethoscope. Then, the images appeared. There were burning people everywhere around him, and he started screaming again, mostly terrified of the fact that he had hallucinations rather than of the hallucinations themselves.

The stethoscope was still harassing him, another needle went into his vein, while he was surrounded by all those terrifying images of the war around him.

“I said it’s a panic episode!” he shouted, moving away from the stethoscope once again, defensively hugging himself. He looked around, seeing those faces, remembering where he saw them before, what he _did_ to them.

“Sir, we have to check. It’s the protocol. Sir, do you feel squeezing pain and pressure in the chest?” the nurse was insisting.

There wasn’t enough air on earth for him to answer that question. He was struggling to breathe and sweating and seeing all those images around him for what felt like an eternity but then it all stopped. There was only a hint of smoke in the air.

He lied back on the bed, feeling absolutely tired and terrified.

He wasn’t terrified of having those panic episodes again. He had them for some time after Ishval, and having to fight that day probably brought them back.

He was terrified of what those episodes meant for him now when he was blind.

Everything in the darkness already felt unnatural, non-existing. He had to touch things to realize that they were there. He was so used to his sight that no other senses would compensate for it. What could he do now, when he couldn’t rely on his remaining senses? How would he distinguish an actual fire in his room from the smell of fire in his head?

Of all the things that the faceless figure could have taken from him, it chose his eyes… Why wouldn’t it take his arms or his legs or maybe even hair? Ugh, he hated the idea of him going bald.

He turned in the direction of the wall and touched it, finding solace in the fact that he could at least feel things by touching them now. Then there was the blanket smelling of disinfectant, almost wooden to the touch because of all the starch soaked into it – he touched it too and smiled, thinking how he could practically imagine it being white and boring from that touch alone, and thinking about it was comforting.

That was when he heard someone slamming the door open behind him. Suddenly, there was a rotten smell in the room.

“Finally, Roy. I had to check rooms on three floors to find you. How do those nurses not even know where a Colonel is?”

Roy stopped breathing in panic.

Smelling things and seeing things was fine. He knew those were not real.

But auditory hallucinations now?

His breath hitched, and he wished that that creature took away all his remaining senses and all those hallucinations or just the entirety of him.

“You wouldn’t believe what just happened,” the voice continued speaking fast, breathing like after a long run. “Taxi drivers just won’t stop! And the ones who did refused to go to the Central hospital. And then there was the whole cemetery experience… I still don’t know what it was but if it’s your prank, Roy, then we really need to talk. I knew that you were sour because of that sheep in your living room, but you weren’t supposed to prank me back like this. It’s not how it works! I mean I put a sheep into your room, and then you put a cow in mine, it’s not like I bring a sheep, and you place me into some creepy coffin.”

The voice seemed so real, whereas Roy felt small and unprotected, and it felt just like he was about to have one of those panic episodes once again. That was too much. He was fine with seeing strangers – even if those were the people he killed – but he wasn’t in the mood to listen to Maes again.

“I really need to say something to you,” the voice suddenly became serious. “It’s really important. I’m not even going to show you photos now or anything, so you can stop hiding. Just listen to me.”

He covered his ears, stupidly hoping that it would stop and it helped with the voice a little bit but he could still hear it.

“Roy?” the voice was hesitant now. “It’s about an alchemy circle. The entire country… Fuck, are you still pranking me or something? It’s getting really scary now.”

Roy shook his head, trying to do anything just to not hear it.

Maybe a little bit more painkillers would help? Or those sleeping pills? Doctors had a way to get people to sleep, didn’t they?

He braved himself to turn in the direction of the voice and started searching for the button to call the nurse.

“Buddy?” Maes’ voice again.

Roy found something wooden next to his bed and started slowly sensing his way to the top of it. The button was supposed to be on the table, wasn’t it?

“W-why are your eyes bandaged?” almost a scream.

Roy found the top of the table and started moving his fingers to the middle. The button must have been there.

“Why aren’t you talking to me?” with desperation in the tone.

His hands found something round, and when he was about to press it, he felt someone else’s hand on his.

He screamed, trying to get rid of that hand as fast as possible, and then he violently jerked away in the direction of the wall, hitting it in the process.

“Roy,” the voice said and he felt the hand cautiously touching him once again.

Roy felt trapped and terrified out of his mind. It felt so real.

“You’re dead!” he said almost like a mantra. “You’re not real… It’s just an auditory hallucination now. And a t-tactile too…”

“Roy, no, listen…”

Roy realized something and started laughing hysterically.

“All four… All four,” he said barely containing laughter. “Visual, tactile, auditory, and what was the word…. Ol… Factory, right? Olfactory.”

He smiled widely, knowing full well that he actually looked crazy that moment.

“It’s like collecting stamps, isn’t it? Though I was lucky enough to get them all on a single day… That’d be a fucking record, wouldn’t it? Going crazy within 24 hours… I need to write to the Guinness book or something.”

He was still laughing when the voice disappeared. He barely stopped laughing and evened his breath. Thank God it stopped.

He decided that he would call the nurses anyway. Maybe all those hallucinations were just a side effect of painkillers? He could ask them to give him some sleeping pills and hope that tomorrow, he would feel better.

He started reaching out for the button again.

“Feeling calmer now?” the voice asked, and Roy stopped, feeling panic returning to him.

“All right, let’s assume I’m a hallucination, but you’ll answer me. There’s nothing wrong in speaking with your hallucination, is there?”

Roy laughed again, losing the button in the process.

“That’s what a hallucination would say.”

“Just say yes or no, all right?”

Roy nodded hesitantly.

“You said that I am dead. Did you mean I am literally dead? Buried on the military cemetery with a tombstone kind of dead?”

“Yes, and at that, “loving father and best friend”, the date of your birth and death, your ranks - all that normal stuff on it. Judging from your tombstone, no one would ever believe that you put a living sheep in my bedroom.”

Roy smiled. Maybe it wasn’t that bad? Speaking with the hallucination at least gave him the satisfaction of feeling like Maes wasn’t dead anymore.

“And you painted it pink, Maes! Can you imagine how I looked when I called Riza to ask for help with a pink sheep at 3 in the morning?! She thought I was drunk which I was but it’s another matter,” Roy said, remembering how outraged he was when he found it. The memory of the episode was calming him. “Where did you even find a sheep? Hope you weren’t lying when you said that you found a loving owner for it because it was a really nice sheep, you know?”

He heard something hitting the floor. Then, the sound of faster breathing. The sound of something small and metallic dropping on the floor – like coins or buttons. Gosh, those hallucinations were getting more and more immersive.

“And the bathroom stairs prank was even worse…” he continued, not really caring for the barrage of sounds surrounding him now. If he was going crazy enough to speak with a hallucination, he could as well say all he wanted to say to Maes. “I don’t even know why I felt the way I did when you died considering how much time you spent pranking me.”

He stopped speaking because now he finally started listening to the voice again.

“I am!” the voice was reaching from somewhere far in the corner of the room. It was hysteric. “That thing… It shot me… The phone was not answering… Oh God, Roy, the tombstone was real, was it? And that’s an actual rotting general’s uniform…”

“I was dead,” the voice repeated like it couldn’t believe that simple fact. “Buried,” almost whispering. “God, they had a funeral for me… Poor Elicia!”

“Yeah, whatever,” Roy answered in a bored tone, feeling absolutely calm now. “If you’re a product of my imagination, it’s quite a dumb revelation, since you’ve been dead for at least eight months. Not that I need a fucking hallucination to remind me of that.”

“Eight months…” the voice echoed him. “Her birthday will be soon… All those boys would want to date her now when I am not here! And Gracia… what if she decided to move on?? How on Earth am I going to explain this to her?”

Then, there was silence filled with someone’s breathing getting slower and slower. Roy heard the steps moving closer to him.

“Roy,” he heard a much calmer voice next to him. “Have you performed a human transmutation today?”

Roy simply nodded, feeling too ashamed to confess.

“And you wanted to return me to life, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Roy whispered.

There was a sad small sigh in response and silence for a few minutes – he felt just a small tap on his hand, but nothing more.

Then, the voice continued speaking again, now slow and with trembling in the tone, barely managing to say the words.

“Was it the toll? Your eyes…”

Roy shook his head.

“No, I don’t want to talk about it. Ever. If you’re my hallucination, then at least you could not talk about it, right?”

There was silence once again, only interrupted by one small – obviously contained – sob. Then he heard someone sitting next to him.

“I don’t know how to convince you, Roy.” The tickling of someone’s breathing on his neck. The voice that had all the undertones of Maes, that screamed that it was Maes; the way the words were formed was also so much Maes… “But it worked. I am alive now.”

Someone pulled his hand and raised it, and then he touched… Was it a nose? He started moving his hand, desperately trying to figure out the face he was touching from the very little information he had. It didn’t really work. He could say that he was touching a nose or a mouth, but that was it. No outline of someone’s head was formed in his mind. At least, until his hand found stubble on the face – itchy, like sandpaper. That one he could easily imagine being Maes’ face.

He accidentally moved his hand lower, and whoever it was wasn’t wearing a t-shirt.

Did he just touch a naked torso of a guy?!

He stopped, suddenly feeling embarrassed.

“Ugm, my shirt and jacket _stank_ ,” the voice moved away from him and said as if trying to sound as cheerful as possible. “Can I borrow your clothes, by the way?”

“Yes,” Roy nodded, raising an eyebrow. “Always wanted to loan my clothes to a hallucination.”

“Yeah, your insistence that I’m a hallucination is a bit offending, you know. You cannot return someone from the dead and then simply act as if this someone doesn’t exist.” The sounds of someone opening the drawers. “Besides, if you had a visual hallucination today, it’s a Charles Bonnet syndrome – you should look it up. Happens in case of a sensory deprivation, and it’s absolutely normal. Oh, I’ll take those shoes too.”

There were sounds of someone opening other doors, and then a heap of clothes falling on the floor. Roy felt a sting of irritation. Every single time when Maes asked for his stuff, he never put it back as it was. Never. He was just an epitome of chaos. Stop, that one wasn’t Maes. That one was a hallucination that somehow knew things he couldn’t possibly know.

“And with the olfactory one,” the voice continued, now sounding a bit condescending. There was also a sound of a zipper going up. “You had them just after Ishval, remember? With the panic episodes. So no, you aren’t going crazy. Fuck, those pants are too tight!” the sound of a zipper going down and another item of his precious clothing landing on the floor.

“There’s no reason for you to have such complex auditory and tactile hallucinations all of the sudden. Really, do you think you have a hallucination of me naked in your room, Roy?”

Roy shook his head.

“Naked?!”

“How do you think I’m trying all of it? Don’t worry, I’m flattered that you’d believe that you hallucinate me naked,” the voice was outright teasing him.

Roy felt his face getting hot – he was probably blushing.

“Can I borrow your red t-shirt? It’s the only one that doesn’t look as boring as all your other clothes.”

“Red t-shirt?” Roy echoed, and then he stopped speaking, stunned.

He didn’t have a red t-shirt.

Except for… Yes, he had one back when he was a teen. Maybe his imagination was playing with some earlier memories?

He breathed out, remembering that Madame Christmas packed his suitcase for that mission. She must have packed some of his older stuff, and she also really liked red.

It made perfect sense now. He felt like he did when he found something that didn’t make sense in his alchemic calculations, but then, the way it did make sense gave him more information about the alchemy… Could his brain make up something so bizarre but making perfect sense at the same time?

Besides, the only thing that didn’t make sense was Maes being alive.

And Roy performed human transmutation that very day, and he asked the faceless figure to return Maes to life.

Roy sighed out, realizing that it could be real.

He smiled, sudden joy filling him. Even a small hope that it was real was enough.

“Hey, buddy,” the voice said somewhere next to him. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yes,” Roy said hesitantly because he didn’t really know. Either he was absolutely okay because it had worked – it worked, it worked, it worked – or he wasn’t, and he belonged in a mental asylum alongside with people who hallucinated them being Fuhrers or prophets.

“I have to go now, to check on Gracia and Elicia. I won’t be able to persuade you that I’m real anyway, Roy.”

There was silence then, ridden with heavy breathing next to him. He felt drops of something falling on his shoulder, a salty taste in the air.

“I… Your eyes, Roy…” big hands hugging him very tightly. “I’m so sorry, buddy… That thing, I should have shot at it, should have run, should have found a way… Should have written a whole fucking will where I’d write “don’t perform human transmutation, you idiot” over and over again… Shouldn’t have called you today in front of that soldier… Shouldn’t have freaked you out by just coming there unannounced when you were having such a bad time. I’m so sorry, Roy.”

Roy hesitantly hugged back. It couldn’t be just a hallucination. It was real, all of it, it had to be real.

“You’re back,” he said, barely containing sobs. “You’re back,” he repeated, now absolutely sure that it wasn’t a hallucination.

His best friend was alive.

* * *

** Vignette 2 – Olivier Armstrong / Mary Sue, fluff **

(not trying to call out anyone with that fic, I actually have a few guilty pleasure Mary Sue stories in my head – though it’s a guy and a football player :D and he knows more languages and also plays hockey)

Olivier looked at the thin figure of a girl lying next to her.

She still couldn’t understand how on Earth she was lucky enough to date someone like her.

Aññé-Márie Sue-Kim was a princess from a line of women-warriors from Xing. She was better at alchemy than anyone in Amestris. Olivier once saw her defeat Edward Elric using no more than her little finger. Aññé-Márie was also fluent in at least seven languages, a figure-skating champion, and a lead singer in her rock group. Yes, she was perfect.

And she was beautiful. Oh, she was beautiful. Pale skin, long black hair and narrow blue eyes, so uncharacteristic for people from Xing. Aññé-Márie was so beautiful that people on the streets stopped when they saw her and immediately fell in love. Olivier didn’t escape that fate either.

“Olivier?” Aññé-Márie asked, waking up.

“I’m here, my little honey,” Olivier answered in a hushed tone. When she saw Aññé-Márie, she couldn’t help speaking gently. All her bravado and mean demeanour disappeared the same moment.

“I love you.” Aññé-Márie smiled in response. “But please, don’t call me beautiful. I’m not. The true beauty lies inside the people... After what happened to my parents, there won’t ever be any beauty inside me,” Aññé-Márie hid her gaze, and Olivier hugged her as tightly as she could. Aññé-Márie didn’t need her protection, but she still was vulnerable and depressed all the time, after what happened to her clan, and all Olivier could do was to help her to live through it.

They spent the rest of the night like that, hugging each other and each thinking about their own personal demons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone actually read this, then you were treated to a wonderful and unique opportunity of reading yet another rendition of Maes-Hughes-was-brought-back-to-life trope. But I love Maes Hughes and I don't want him dead. Why wouldn't FMA be like Marvel where everyone is constantly surviving against all the odds? Why did I have to watch so many characters die... Anyway, there's actually an inside-the-fanfic-universe reason for how he was brought back to life and I hope that I'll get to write it in the plot somewhere.


	4. Connected passed pawns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connected passed pawns is a structure where two or more pawns protect each other, and there are no enemy pawns in front of them. Pawns by themselves are rarely useful figures, but the case of connected passed pawns turns them into a menacing force, potential queens in the making.

They spent hours talking. Not about anything important though. Apparently, there were at least fifteen other pranks that Roy was eager to discuss. He was speaking with such unmistakable passion in his voice that for the first time that day Maes realized how _dead_ he actually had been. He had been so _dead_ that his best friend started speaking of him as if he never existed – as if he was superhuman, perfect and _dead_. Before Roy had hated all those pranks and now it seemed like Roy felt like he hadn’t even deserved to be pranked by someone like Maes.

It took Maes ages to steer the conversation to more important topics, partly, because Roy didn’t want to discuss whatever bad things had happened when Maes hadn’t been around. He explained though that there was indeed an alchemical array drawn by bloody conflicts in Amestris. Besides, an evil clique had made a philosopher’s stone out of souls of all Amestrians, but then Hohenheim and Elrics had done something to reverse it. And Gracia had stayed in Central on the “Promised” day – whatever _that_ was - “despite Roy’s insistence”… And that Roy was somehow to blame for all of that. That was a long and confusing explanation, and when Maes started arguing because he couldn’t bear listening to all those defeatist arguments anymore, Roy suddenly realized that he was too tired for guests and certain guests were supposed to check on their wife and daughter anyway.

So Maes diligently went home even though he _didn’t_ want to.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Maes still hoped that he had been pranked and hadn’t been returned to life, and thus didn’t need to check on his wife and daughter in the middle of the night. Sure they knew that he simply had to work overnight because of crimes or dubious pranksters who made people believe that they were dead. And if he actually had died, who knew if he was alive? Who knew if he wasn’t going to turn into some monster like the one who had killed him or that he wouldn’t simply seize to exist in a few days? What if he was only bringing more sorrow to his family?

When he finally was next to his house, he couldn’t find it in himself to knock.

What if she had left the city – just like many others who were trying to leave Central that very moment, judging from the traffic jams on the streets? If she already had left, he’d feel devastated that he would have to wait more for her to return. If she didn’t leave, then he would have to explain all of it to her, and he couldn’t really explain anything. Nor why he hadn’t been able to defend himself against that shape-shifting creature – simply because that creature had turned into Gracia… Nor how he was alive now – he wouldn’t be able to explain the feeling of his own body slowly building around him, his senses returning earlier than the ability to breathe, the veins forming right in front of his eyes, and then, suddenly, the feeling of being stuck somewhere in a dark place, with no one around, and the air smelling _weird_.

And Elicia… Children at that age, they forget easily. She must have moved on already, and he’d make it all worse for her by appearing there once again after she already witnessed his funeral.

Maes almost decided to go back to the hospital and never see Gracia or Elicia again, but he couldn’t do that either. Against his will, his legs dragged him to the door, and then he knocked. Two times, like he always did when he came back from work.

No one answered. They must have left, right? Maes felt shameful relief at the thought of that. Then, he heard the sounds of little footsteps approaching the door.

“Don’t open the door!” he heard Gracia shouting inside and then her footsteps running in the direction of the door.

“Daddy?” Elicia opened the door nevertheless and now looked at him with sleepy eyes, in her cute pink pyjamas.

She was so much taller now. He smiled at her, and the words left him all at once at the look of the genuine confusion on her face.

“Daddy?!” she said once again, now clearly waking up. “DADDY!” she cried ecstatically and then hugged him.

“Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy,” she was saying as if trying to get rid of all those words stuck in her system, not being used all those months he wasn’t around.

“Step away from my daughter!” Maes looked up and saw Gracia holding a knife – one of his knives, by the way. He didn’t, so she started closing on him, her hand tightly squeezing the knife, and she herself ready to kill. “I said STEP AWAY, you monster!”

“What?” Maes said, now struggling out of Elicia’s grasp but she wouldn’t release him. “It’s me, Gracia!”

“Elicia, come to me, please,” Gracia said, and her voice was trembling. “Elicia, what did I tell you?”

Elicia looked at him and her mother, hesitantly, as if taking a very difficult decision. Then, she released him, and at that moment, Gracia quickly snatched her away.

“But mum,” Elicia said, now sounding as if she was about to cry. “It’s daddy, mum!”

“Remember what I've told you?” Gracia said in a soothing tone, somehow managing it with Elicia in one hand and a knife in another. “They change faces. The monsters who killed daddy.”

Elicia looked at Gracia for a few seconds, clearly thinking about it, and then she looked straight at Maes and nodded. He smiled – that was yet another confirmation that his daughter was the cleverest girl on Earth.

“Leave!” Gracia shouted, carefully manoeuvring her way in the direction of the backdoor. “Or you think I can’t use this knife?”

Maes knew that she could throw the knife almost decently – he taught her personally – and she’d do that and she’d kill him, but there was just a little bit of hesitation in her eyes. Just like when he had been confronted by that shape-shifting monster in form of Gracia, she also couldn’t find it in herself to kill him. That was his opportunity to persuade her.

“I wrote you three letters on my first day in Ishval. The first one about the weather, another with the song that I wrote for you, and the third one about the weather too,” he looked straight at Gracia, enjoying the way her gaze was losing some of the distrust. “And you wrote to me 352 letters in total while I was there. I lost five of them, and kept every other one…” 

He looked at her once again, seeing a smile creeping into her expression. Smile and immense confusion. She carefully placed Elicia back on the ground.

“On our first date, I told you everything I know about fingerprints and the Gemini killer case, and, honestly, you should still be embarrassed that you agreed to date me,” he said, smiling widely.

“I should!” She laughed – a small, confused laugh in the silence of the room – and then started sobbing.

Elicia was looking at him and at Gracia, frowning, and then she smiled.

“It’s daddy!!” she cried, running to Maes and dragging Gracia along with her. “It’s daddy, mum, I told you! Daddy, daddy, daddy!”

The next second, they both hugged him, Elicia very tightly and crying of happiness, and Gracia a bit begrudgingly, as if still feeling distrust for the very fact of him being alive. He hugged them as tight as he could but he wasn’t really focused on what was happening. It felt like only a day ago, he kissed his goodbyes and left for work and found some nice reports and that whole alchemic circle in Amestris, and now he had to go back home and persuade his wife that he wasn’t some shape-shifting monster. And in that blip that he wasn’t there, so many things have happened. He noticed a new sofa in the living room, Gracia had a slightly different haircut, Elrics, Roy and everyone else uncovered a whole conspiracy in Amestris and saved the country, and Elicia – gosh – Elicia was so much older now, and the boys in her kindergarten (or was it a school now? He hated the very thought that she might have gone to school already and he wasn’t there to support her) – and all those boys in the kindergarten probably fought for her attention even more now…

He forcefully stopped the hug and looked at them both more closely.

“So…” he smiled awkwardly because words weren’t coming to his mind now. “How were you two doing?”

-/

Ian was the last to leave the “Kaiser’s gun”, and only because Stefan practically dragged him outside. The pub closed too early to his liking, and he wasn’t in the condition to walk to another pub. Stefan was mumbling something about getting a cab, and Ian would be all for it if he wasn’t sure that they wouldn’t be able to get one. After all, they were among very few people who decided to spend the night at the pub rather than hectically trying to leave the city after what happened at the Central Command that day. So no, they were not getting a nice cushy cab home. Ian started looking around for a bush to sleep under, and that was when he heard someone speaking.

“Guys, listen! “Lion and the seal” has to be open now.” Ian looked in the direction of the voice and saw a short girl in the military uniform addressing a bunch of guys, also from the military. Stefan smiled dumbly and started walking in her direction, certainly hoping to get the girl’s attention. That fool. He was ready to do anything for any girl out there. Ian followed him, barely keeping up with his pace.

Only now, he noticed that there were red stains all over that girl’s military uniform, and it was such a strange sight that he stopped for a second and looked at her.

“What? Why are you staring at me?” she said, suddenly noticing his gaze.

Ian gulped.

“See… It’s just the blood… Nothing else,” he said, now desperately trying to avoid looking at her. Only now he noticed that the bloodstain covered the entirety of her shoulder and then going down, and it looked dry, and it must have smelled terrible. That wasn’t a good outfit for an evening get-together with friends, he thought darkly, barely containing the urge to throw up.

“Blood. And so what?” the girl asked, and then Ian saw a metallic glint of a knife in her hand. “Do you have something against the blood on my uniform?” the girl said, appearing right in front of him, her movement so fast that he didn’t even see her steps. Now, he noticed that other people in that little group also had blood stains all over their uniforms. Some of them were injured too, with their limbs bandaged or in casts.

“We were stationed at Fuhrer’s office today,” she said and then raised her knife straight to his neck. “Only 13 people survived in my platoon.”

Ian stopped breathing, scared out of his mind because she looked as if she was about to kill him. Who in their right mind would even have a knife at a pub crawl?

“Emily, hey, he didn’t mean anything like this,” one of the guys from her group said, but it didn’t look like she heard him.

“My friend Sarah died in my hands today…” Emily said slowly, not even looking at Ian but the knife was still dangerously close to his neck. “It was a tank blast. And you know what? We were doing our job today. We were defending what we were told to defend, and we were damn good at it. It’s not our fault Northerners, Easterners, and alchemists decided to fight in the middle of Central. If it were the alchemists who did it, then they should have only attacked alchemists…. Why on Earth did they attack us? Why… Why did they simply kill her?” She started crying in small, rhythmic sobs. “I want them to see us. The blood on our uniforms. I want them to see it while they celebrate what they call a victory! All those fucking Northerners and Easterners, and especially alchemists. I’ll kill every alchemist I’ll see, I swear!”

Then, she looked at him through the tears in her eyes, her lips trembling, and, despite the strength in the tone, despite all those people around her, willing to protect her, despite the knife she was so proficient at using, - Ian felt how vulnerable she was that very moment.

“Your accent… Are you an alchemist? Or a Northerner?” she asked very quietly.

“Emily!” a guy from her group said, and then he started looking around as if trying to see if anyone else could see them. “We need a plan, Emily. We cannot simply attack Northerners, all right?”

Ian felt the murderous urge in her gaze.

“C-central-division-group-45-A,” he said as fast as he could. “Stefan too.”

Stefan nodded.

“We lost five of ours today,” he said quietly. “Were drinking in their memory…” he didn’t add that they were mostly drinking to forget all those unfortunate enough to not survive that day.

“Oh…” the girl said, dropping her knife to the ground, pulling away from him. Then, she started sobbing. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I could have killed him,” she whispered in-between sobs.

Other guys from her group surrounded her, trying to talk to her, but she couldn’t stop sobbing. Stefan tried to drag Ian away, now speaking about cabs with some desperation in his tone, but Ian didn’t allow him to. He looked at the way the girl was crying and felt a strange kinship with her. He squeezed his way through all those guys around her and sat next to her.

“Emily, right?” he said, smiling, trying to look as if he wasn’t offended by what just happened – and somehow, he wasn’t. Maybe because he was terrified out of his mind or maybe because he also wouldn’t be able to control himself if he saw one of those people who orchestrated the attack on Central.

She nodded and proceeded speaking in small sobs: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry… I wanted to kill you…”

“It’s all right,” he said. “Everyone wants revenge now… You know what Emily?”

She looked at him with wide, trusting eyes, and he smiled more sincerely.

“The alchemists have resurrected the dead today. I and Stefan personally saw one resurrected. Hughes… Who knows how many others are there?”

“Resurrected?!” she said in disbelief. “Are you saying they killed so many ours, attacked Central, made everyone lose consciousness to resurrect people? Are you telling me Sarah has died because they resurrected people?!” She sounded absolutely outraged.

Ian simply nodded.

“I’ll kill them!” she screamed. “I’ll kill them all!” she wailed looking at him with wild eyes.

“But it’s not that bad,” Ian said then very calmly. “If they resurrected people left and right today, we can ask them… Force them – to resurrect all those who died today too. What do you say?”

She nodded to that and then smiled. On her face, there was something that Ian hadn’t seen on anyone’s faces that day – hope.

“You’ll tell me all you know about the resurrections today,” she said now in a tone like she was ordering.

Ian nodded. He didn’t tell anyone about the incident at the cemetery yet, but now, he felt like he finally found someone who would not only understand what he felt that day but would also do something about it. He felt like he finally found a group he belonged to.

-/

**One month later**

“Careful, please!” Gracia told him and kissed him before swiftly leaving to start her shift at the hospital. That became a little ritual of theirs in the last month. Gracia drove him to the backdoor of the hospital, checked if his hood was in place, and then asked him to be careful.

In the month since his return from the dead, Maes learned that being brought back to life came with many obstacles. Specifically, obstacles being that he wasn’t supposed to be alive. The government already had a funeral for him, and, considering the rebellion in the city, wasn’t planning to admit that he was alive. His mishaps just after being returned to life, such as using personal code in the call to the Eastern city command and recognizing someone who also recognized him, the government explained as an elaborate prank. Officially, there weren’t any successful human transmutations.

For him, it meant that he had to spend most of his time hiding from everyone else. Which was boring and tiring. Of course, he spent time with Elisia and it was absolutely impossibly perfect but then Gracia insisted that Elisia went back to her kindergarten or people would start suspecting that he was alive. Well, at least, on that day he negotiated that he’d be able to visit the hospital once in a while. He hoped that at least he’d be of use for managing the fallout of the Promised day or the very least support everyone who was struggling with injuries after the Promised day.

Specifically, Roy. He wasn’t doing okay, and Maes hoped that maybe if they were to talk about the Promised day, then it’d help.

Maes manoeuvred the hospital corridors to the fourth floor. There, on the balcony, he saw a small outline in a wheelchair.

Deciding that Roy could wait a few minutes, he walked into the balcony himself.

“Hi, there!” he said, looking at Ed.

“General Hughes.” Ed grinned in response, and now Maes noticed that Ed looked happier than he was all the other days when Maes saw him. Besides, Ed always became happier when he saw Maes – something about Truth finally upholding the Equivalent Exchange.

“What? Something the docs said?”

Ed nodded. “No amputation and I can even feel the fingers now,” he proudly wiggled the fingers on the leg that was in the cast. “What about you? Got your rank back?”

Maes shook his head and also looked in the direction Ed was looking. The East. Probably was eager to go back to Risembool and live his happily-ever-after life.

“Huh, that’s unfair,” Ed said, sounding too tired to get genuinely angry at whoever wasn’t giving Maes his old life back.

“Need any help back to your room?” Maes asked, trying not to sound like he was pitying Ed. He was not. It was a simple matter. Ed didn’t have his automail hand right now, and it must have been hard for him to move the wheelchair with only one functioning limb.

“Nah, can you just pitch Al from Colonel? I bet he’s there again.”

Al was indeed by Roy, sitting there with a notebook in his hands and a few alchemy books on his lap. Maes stopped for a second, looking at the boy. He was so unused to the sight of Al not in the armour, and he was so happy to see that brothers succeeded in their quest in those long eight months he wasn’t there.

Al was reluctant to leave, but he agreed when he heard that his brother somehow managed to travel all the way to the balcony.

Once Al left, Maes looked at Roy – who had a children’s Braille book at his lap and feigned as much interest to the text as he possibly could – and noticed that Roy didn’t shave at all the last few days when Maes hadn’t visited.

“What’s that with Al?” he asked, sitting comfortably next to Roy. At that, Roy closed the book – the very first page he was pretending to read – and smiled.

“Says that he wants to help me to write my research notes. Or an autobiography about the Promised day.”

“That’s very… considerate of him,” Maes raised an eyebrow and expressed as much confusion as he could in the tone of his speech.

“Of course, he’d prefer an autobiography of my human transmutation attempt… Even offered to volunteer for the military and help to deal with the revolt of martyrs in return for the human transmutation secrets,” Roy said and chuckled bitterly. “Something about these boys and a constant longing for a human transmutation.”

“But he wouldn’t need it now, right?” Maes asked, feeling fear crawling deep inside him. “They reached their goal, and no need to perform it again.”

Roy shook his head.

“Ed’s still bad. The liver and the consequences of sepsis… The leg too. And Al is a scientist, even more so than Ed… He’s still sure that alchemy can solve everything. He already has some interesting calculations on human transmutation aimed at creating new organs.”

Maes avoided looking at Roy that moment. He knew what he’d see. The black bandage on the bowed head, messy hair, slumped shoulders, frown… Somehow, Roy managed to make all those inevitably bad consequences of the Promised day about him. Something along the lines of him not being able to help on the Promised day and also agreeing to perform the human transmutation. The last one, Roy never told him, but Maes was able to guess it anyway, the way Roy also felt guilty that he performed a human transmutation to save the woman he loved and to eventually save him, Maes.

“How’s Braille going?” Maes said then, deciding to change the direction their conversation was heading.

“I’ll have enough time to learn it,” Roy smiled. “They just delivered the order, by the way,” he nodded in the direction of a small envelope on the nightstand next to the bed. “Twenty-five thousand cens per month _and_ a personal nurse. That’s very _generous_ of them – what do you think?”

Maes looked at the envelope closely. It was sent from the Veteran’s Administration office, the Retirement and Pensions bureau.

“No, Roy…” he finally looked at Roy and noticed that now, Roy was even more depressed than usually. “It’s not what we agreed on, all right? I’m helping you to become the Fuhrer, and the least you could do is not retiring before you get to be the Fuhrer. And what about Ishval? Are you simply allowing them to…”

“I’m sorry, Maes,” Roy interrupted him. “I don’t think I’d pass a medical assessment right now. Blindness _is_ a disqualifying factor.”

“Blindness?! Blindness?” Maes repeated in fury. “Veteran's Administration only returned to work last week. To get to the pension size stage so fast, you must have conceded all the proper retirement procedure! I know that it’s hard but you are not supposed to give up so easily.”

“What was I supposed to do then?” Roy smiled. “I did all I could, really, Maes. I coached Breda, Havoc and Fuery on what to do in Ishval, and they are on their way there already. I arranged for Scar and Miles to go there too… And that’s all I could do now.”

“Havoc is barely walking and he agreed to go to Ishval, and you won’t even write a single letter requesting them to reconsider the medical assessment. And they will reconsider because frankly, Roy, how many state alchemists are left there?”

There wasn’t an answer from Roy at all, just an expression indicating that he wasn’t in the mood to discuss anything now, but Maes couldn’t stop talking.

“And you haven’t learned a single Braille letter or even how to use that cane! No, Roy, I don’t agree that you’re trying.”

Roy smiled, bitterly, as if he thought about it many times already. He probably did.

“That’s why I need a retirement, buddy. I’ll spend all my time learning Braille, and how to use this _lovely_ cane.”

Maes wanted to say something else, persuade Roy, he even thought about trying to keep Roy in the military against his will (sure a few recommendation letters from a _general_ who died in action just nine months ago could help, couldn’t they?), but then he remembered that they were _friends_ , and Roy was struggling and blaming himself for all bad things that happened and not taking any credit for good things that happened, and he just went blind and had a hard time adjusting because who wouldn’t – and he was about to make an important step in his life, even if a wrong one, and he needed all support he could get.

“This cane is actually lovely,” Maes finally said after too long of a pause, all filled with him trying not to start the argument over again. “It has a salamander engraved on it. It looks really badass, you know?”

Roy smiled, looking a bit more interested.

“How badass, exactly, you saying?”

-/

“I found the best spot! Come here,” Emily said and practically dragged Ian deeper into the crowd.

Ian looked around, realizing that there were way more people than he expected to see. Emily dragged him closer to the scene and then turned to the left. The spot that she found was indeed better. Not in the middle of the crowd, but still very close to the scene.

“That’s Rick, you already met him,” Emily continued, pointing at the people gathered there. “Mark, Igor, Alex, Pavel, Dean,” Ian looked at the faces around him and decided that he wasn’t going to remember them all anyway. “Liza, just a little bit more than my best friend if you know what I mean,” she smiled. “See the girl out there – it’s Stacy, and she is looking for a guy to date,” Emily looked at him and winked and then proceeded to shout with the whole force of her lungs. “Stacy, come here, this is Ian!”

Stacy? Liza? A guy to date? Ian just needed a few friends, not a whole information dump about all the intricacies of the romantic scene in that small group. The said Stacy quickly walked in his direction, looking embarrassed.

“Did she say that I’m looking for someone to date?” she said. “Emily!” she shouted accusingly – but Emily was already back in the crowd, pitching other people to join their group. She seemed to know everyone at that gathering, and there must have been thousands of people around them.

“It starts! It starts!” Stacy screamed. Ian nodded – a man was walking in the direction of an improvised stand in the middle of the scene. Interestingly enough, the man had a ridiculous outfit. A long red sock tied to his neck instead of a tie, a yellow t-shirt, and white pants.

Ian raised his eyebrows.

“Is he always… ugm.. in a sock?” he said, addressing Stacy.

“Yes though he usually has a purple one,” Stacy said with an admiration in her tone. “He’s about to start!” she screamed and jumped in her place. Then, she looked at Ian again – and his face must have shown all his confusion with the situation, so she started speaking more patiently, explaining it to him like to a little child. “He’s a poet. A futurist. Really, you should check out his stuff. They,” she pointed her finger up, as if hinting at the government, “banned his poetry. Emily has some of his poems though, you can copy them for yourself from her notebooks. He’d also been to jail and everything, but he still speaks about all of it! He’s not afraid like everyone else!”

When the guy in a red sock started actually speaking, Ian couldn’t hear his words for some time, since everyone else was screaming. Only in a few minutes, he was able to discern what was being said.

“Shout “yes” if you know at least one person who was killed on May fifteenth!” the guy screamed in his microphone, and everyone in the hall screamed “yes”, including Ian.

“Shout “yes” if you are desperate to find out who was responsible and why they did it!”

Everyone shouted “yes” and Ian did too, so loud that he felt like his voice was about to break.

“Shout “yes” if you support the strike!”

The voice got lost in the shouts of the crowd once again, but then the guy in the sock put a finger to his lips.

Slowly, the crowd went quiet.

“Now, I’ve heard that someone hunted down a state alchemist and tortured him to make him return one of the martyrs to life.”

Someone cheered in the crowd, but the guy in the sock quickly shut them down.

After that, there was absolute silence.

“That’s not a solution, people!” the guy said then in a very serious tone. “It’s not how we act now. What is happening,” he stopped, as if waiting for everyone’s attention. “There have to be specific people who are responsible. Yes, they are alchemists. Yes, they are still free. Yes, they are still walking around us. But you know why they are free?”

People started shouting responses, and the voice of the guy in the sock was not discernible again. When Ian finally heard the words that the guy was saying, he fully agreed with them.

“Because our government is not telling us shit! They are protecting whoever did that! There wasn’t a trial. There wasn’t an official report! No one gave us the details that the government promised. So why are we striking, people?”

“TO SHOW THEM!” the crowd shouted.

“To show whom?”

“THE ALCHEMISTS!”

“And?”

“THE GOVERNMENT!”

“And to whom in the government?”

“GRUMMAN!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a new lockdown in my place, so I suddenly remembered about this fic and that I wanted to start knitting, and since this fic seemed like not too big of a time commitment, I ended up writing a fic rather than knitting. There's also a new fanart that I'll post in Chapter 2 in case anyone wants to check it out.
> 
> Edit: I decided to post the fanart here too just in case lol [Link](https://64.media.tumblr.com/9065798b397e4f06c2a8f8240c2f5bc4/bc5b8c9866f10107-3a/s2048x3072/4bc6fdb5221cfc56f2f58d9d9593bf7c1dd8695f.jpg)


	5. Fool's mate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fool's mate is the fastest possible checkmate in chess that can only happen if the player playing as white makes an extraordinary blunder or actively sabotages her/his own game

It had been no more than thirty minutes after Maes had left when Roy heard the door of his room being opened once again.

“Need more time for myself, buddy,” he said, not even trying to conceal his irritation anymore. Maes had to know that Roy saw – heard – through all his attempts _not_ to start yet another lecture about mistakes, retirements, and promises. Maybe it was something about the other world affecting people, or maybe Maes always had been like that, but he still _somehow_ thought that there was a way forward.

However, instead of Maes’ quick decisive footsteps, he heard slow and shuffling. Whoever was there in the room, certainly hadn’t been there before.

“Oh, where’s the light switch?” he finally heard and immediately recognized the voice.

“Fuhrer Grumman, Sir,” Roy answered and saluted in swift, honed motion. 

“At ease,” Grumman said. “I just wanted to play chess with you, that’s it. Though I’m afraid I need the light.”

“To the right of the door, Sir,” he answered, pointing where he thought it was. Somewhere inside his chest, the same old sense of irreparability of his condition arose. He wasn’t even aware that the lights were off and when he heard the sound of the switch, he didn’t feel any difference.

“Don’t worry, I’ll set the board up myself,” Grumman said, followed by the sounds of little figures hitting the table.

“Queen on her own colour,” Grumman started humming to himself, just like he always did when he was setting up the board.

“Sir…” Roy said and paused for a second. He hated speaking about his blindness. “I… I won’t see the board.”

“Let’s try it anyway. A good chess player has to keep the board in mind.”

Roy didn’t really want to play. He won against Grumman only once when he could see, and there was no way for him to win now. The whole chess game just taunted his weaknesses to him. It showed how _useless_ he had become.

“Sir, we don’t have a clock…” Roy tried once again. “Besides, you won’t enjoy this… I’m no Morphy to play entertaining blindfold chess.”

“I simply want to honour the old tradition of ours,” Grumman said in his usual cheerful tone. “You play white,” he continued, now sounding outright unyielding. “Your move.”

Roy smiled. He had an idea in mind.

“Pawn to f3,” he said with a wide grin.

“Hmm, Barnes opening. Wasn’t it ranked the worst by Finegold? Interesting. Pawn to e5.”

Roy paused before announcing his next move – but in truth, he was barely containing laughter. That was what Grumman would get for _forcing_ him to play, for showing what a _blind_ fool he had become.

“Pawn to g4.”

“What?” Grumman practically shouted. “That’s… That’s not how you play chess with your Fuhrer, Colonel Mustang!”

Roy leaned against the wall, smiling victoriously.

“I’d lie my King down myself if I could see it, Sir.”

The move that he played was also called “the Fool’s mate”. That was the shortest mate in existence. Pawns opened a path to the King, and then the Queen delivered the mate. White lost only in two moves. Simple and easy. Also good for showing that he wasn’t interested in the game.

Grumman stood up and made a few steps, breathing heavily. Then, he sighed and went back to the table.

“You know what, Colonel? In every game, you have to show your best. A game _is_ a representation of a real war, and you wouldn’t like to lose it, would you?”

“Well, I’ve already lost, _Sir_ ,” Roy said defiantly. He wasn’t in the mood for yet another pointless lecture about not giving up. There were simply situations in which people were _useless_ to do anything, weren’t there?

“I haven’t made my move yet, Colonel. Pawn to d5. Let’s say I give you a second chance,” Grumman said, and his voice was strangely _pleading_.

“King to f2,” Roy said, still grinning. He never had so much fun losing a game.

“And what’s that?”

“King has to lead his soldiers, doesn’t he?”

Moving the King so early in the game was another ridiculous strategy. A good chess player would be able to win against an amateur after moving his King so early in the game, but in the game of two chess players of a comparable level, it was simply insulting.

“I see,” Grumman said, stepping away. “Just like I expected,” he said with a sadness in his tone.

Then, he walked back to the door, opened it and started speaking as if addressing someone else: “Come in, please. Yes, that’s him.”

“Yes, Sir,” he heard the crowd of voices answering and then steps of people marching into the room.

Roy didn’t realize what was happening until he felt shackles being put on his hands. Then, clicking. They were arresting him.

In the short struggle that followed – not that he was trying to fight them, he simply wasn’t aware that he was being arrested and hit someone accidentally before he realized it – the chessboard fell to the ground and now he felt small wooden figures under his legs while being led away.

When he heard Grumman’s voice once again, he stopped, forcing the soldiers around him to stop too.

“Oh, Sir.” He smiled. “You should have said that losing this game came with… Benefits.”

“I’m sorry for doing this, Colonel Mustang. But the rebellion of 71 martyrs is really getting out of hand,” Grumman’s voice sounded remorseful. 

“And you need a scapegoat,” Roy said, nodding. During his stay in the hospital, he had thought about it happening, even expecting it – and simply decided not to act. He wasn’t going to run rather than face the consequences of his mistakes.

“Yes, Colonel. And you know why I chose you?” Grumman whispered somewhere very close to him.

 _Because you’re a traitor, and because the coup hadn’t changed anything in the government?_ That betrayal happened didn’t even need to be discussed – they both knew that that was what just happened.

“I don’t know… You think my mugshots would look really scary, with this bandage?” Roy said instead.

“Because everyone would believe it, wouldn’t they?” Grumman said so quietly that no one else besides Roy could have heard it. “They know what being called the Hero of Ishval entails. They saw you fighting on the Promised Day. It was your best friend who was returned from the dead. I’m sorry for doing this to you – but at least now you could see that I don’t act out of hatred towards you. If anything…”

Roy interrupted him.

“Why don’t you simply tell them the truth?” he asked and the very same moment, he wanted to laugh at the naivety of that question.

“Just for a second,” Grumman said, addressing the soldiers who got impatient and were trying to drag Roy away. Then, he continued in a whisper next to Roy’s ear. “There’s only one benefit in doing it – it’d be the right thing to do. You’re too young and brush to think about all other consequences.” Grumman sighed. “Our national image would be absolutely destroyed… Army would have fewer volunteers and I’m not even talking about having to publish new textbooks and removing all the portraits of Bradley they are putting everywhere now.”

The fact that Grumman – the only person whom Roy trusted enough to be the Fuhrer before he could be – was speaking that way was sad but Roy couldn’t help chuckling at all the petty things that were stopping Grumman from doing the right thing.

“I know you think it’s not something a Fuhrer should care about,” Grumman said before Roy could say anything. “But you wouldn’t know. You always sacrifice your pawns. You always attack, don’t think about consequences, your king is never defended properly… So yes, in the real life, you wouldn’t know the value of those little things that you can’t even measure or see, would you? Something like the national image or having textbooks that create a sense of pride in people.”

“Well, at least, I haven’t sacrificed a single pawn in our last game,” Roy answered, being too carried away by the chess analogies. He didn’t really care for the _excuses_ that Grumman came up with to arrest him.

“I would go for it if I’d get the Flame alchemist on my side though,” Grumman continued, his tone indicating that he was feeling deeply sorry.

“Flame… Alchemist?” Roy repeated confused.

“Yes, you heard it correctly. Not you,” Grumman sighed. “I need the person who arranged the coup against Bradley and found the Fullmetal Alchemist. I need the hero of Ishval who’s willing to do anything to redeem himself. I need him – not someone who’s too depressed to even try to win a single chess game. That’d be exchanging a few pawns for an additional queen but as it stands,” Grumman stopped for a second, and his voice got quiet and defeated. “This is the best decision, even though the most painful I’ve ever taken in my life.”

That looked like the end of their conversation, and the soldiers soon dragged him away – to the corridor, to the elevators and then downstairs, to the hospital courtyard. He didn’t even try to struggle. There wasn’t a point in it, and besides, it was indeed the best decision. The army needed volunteers, people needed a nice lie to believe in, and he needed his punishment for all the horrific things he had done. It was a sad end, but it was deservedly so, and the betrayal didn’t really matter even though Grumman was the person he trusted with all he’d got. It also didn’t matter that he wasn’t going to be there anymore for all the people he wanted to protect because he was too _useless_ to protect anyone, and everyone he ever wanted to protect was pretty capable of protecting themselves now.

Somewhere in the hospital courtyard soldiers also decided to put a sack on his head, and he was thinking about that and finding it inappropriately funny – since he couldn’t _see_ anyway – when he heard the sounds of military cars around him. He was led to one of them.

“No, that’s one for Fullmetal. No metal in it,” the voice said next to him.

Fullmetal?

No! There was supposed to be only one scapegoat. Fullmetal didn’t have anything to do with it!

He started struggling, trying to get out of the shackles and the sack, trying to do anything, to fight. The shackles were holding, whatever he did, and the soldiers who were dragging him didn’t seem like they were bothered by his struggling even in the slightest. They simply dragged him to another truck and put him there.

The door behind him closed and the truck started moving.

-/

“There, please,” Ed said and smiled at the nurse pushing his wheelchair. “Room 617B, I’m signed up for hydroflammachromium therapy. Helps with the cramps.” He stretched his arm to illustrate his point.

The nurse didn’t really look like she cared. She simply left him at 617B and went somewhere else. Just like all the other nurses Ed tricked into taking him into 617B, that one didn’t notice that the room, for instance, was quite dusty and that all the existing medical equipment in there was old and obviously not used in years.

He found out about that room accidentally, after studying the cleaning schedule on the wall of one of the rooms where he had his procedures. It only took him three procedures to learn the entire schedule by heart. That was when he noticed that there wasn’t anyone assigned to clean 617B. Which was a lucky find for him that felt almost as important as the philosopher’s stone clues before.

Yes, he was feeling quite shitty lately. The medical procedures he was assigned to were designed to help him – and some insignificant portion of them actually helped him to feel better – but in general, he was feeling even shittier after those procedures. Tired, to name the exact word. Being in 617B helped him to avoid some of the most exhausting procedures, like when that doctor asked him to straighten his ankle, and it _hurt_ an immeasurable amount. Any other time, Ed would endure and do anything to heal, but now, he simply didn’t have to, and he was pretty happy about that fact.

Even more so, being in 617B was a nice way to avoid the intolerable overprotectiveness that Al had developed lately. The rebellion of hundreds martyrs or whatever it was called was going on in the city, and Al was reading the news about it all the time and it didn’t really help him to deal with that _insufferable_ fear for Ed. Those rebels, Al was saying, could poison Ed or kidnap him and torture into performing a human transmutation, or something even worse… Which, apparently, required Al to check Ed’s room all the time and even any new and “suspicious” looking food that was there.

Ed pushed his wheelchair to the middle of the room, where, as he could smell, there was something delicious. Apple pie, hopefully?

Hughes had learned about that room quite early on, apparently, because he had overheard Ed tricking a nurse into taking him to 617B. Now, they had that little unspoken arrangement consisting of Hughes bringing some tasty stuff in there and Ed sharing all the stories of what had happened when Hughes hadn’t been alive.

He was finishing the second slice of the apple pie when the door behind him opened and someone started dragging his wheelchair outside.

“What?” he screamed and then a big hand closed his mouth. He suddenly felt the same fear as when Scar had attacked him for the first time. All his instincts were telling him to fight, even though all movement was painful. He started struggling and shouting, hoping that someone could hear or see and then, he finally heard the words.

“It’s me! Stop, Ed, we don’t have any time… Ed?”

It was Hughes.

Ed stopped struggling and looked up to be sure. Yes, Hughes.

“Be silent,” another whisper, and then he was dragged from the wheelchair into a stretcher. A big, disinfectant-smelling sheet was put over him. The stretcher started moving, slowly, carefully, and Ed decided to trust and did his part of the job – which was not to move and pretend to be… sick? Dead? He’d definitely benefit if Hughes told him a little bit more about his plan.

Suddenly, the stretcher stopped, and an elevator chimed nearby.

“Heart attack, reanimation protocol failed,” Hughes told to someone. So, he was supposed to play dead. Ed held his breath just to be sure.

“Not here, use the elevator for stretchers. And don’t forget to report the death time to the attending doctor. Gosh, those interns will kill me!” a high-pitched female voice said next to him.

The stretcher started moving in a different direction.

There was also something strange going on around them. He heard sounds of people running around, and the sound was peculiar – heavy, with metallic ‘thuds’ after each step. Soldiers.

“Sir, are you aware of the whereabouts of Dr Miller?” an unfamiliar voice said.

The stretcher stopped once again, and at that, so suddenly that Ed was shifted down a little bit. His leg started _hurting_ even more.

“No, Sir,” Hughes answered in a flat tone, while Ed was biting his lip, trying not to whimper. If only he could move his leg just a little bit.

“Is this the body of the patient from 645A? Dr Miller is the attending physician of this one as well,” the voice was insisting. “Sir, it’s very important.”

Ed gulped in apprehension. Dr Miller was his and Al’s attending physician too. What if he was dangerous? What if Al was in danger too? He wanted to ask himself, but Hughes squeezed his hand as if warning him.

“Oh, I might have seen him in the cafeteria at lunch…” Hughes said now, very cheerfully. “He ordered lasagne, a quiche and a big glass of milk. I think after that, he may be in… You know where right?”

“Thank you, Sir,” Ed heard metallic boots marching away, and a faint Hughes’ “restroom’s to the left”. He finally was able to move his leg into a more comfortable position.

When he heard another elevator sound, Hughes opened the sheet.

“Sorry, it’s just soldiers…” just as Hughes was saying it, the elevator chimed again and the sheet was quickly placed back.

“This body, Sir?” another voice of an owner of heavy metallic boots asked.

“Room 645A, heart attack,” Hughes said and then started gabbling. “Reanimation-protocol-failed, the-double-side-attack-after-cholesterol-withdrawal-syndrome. Used-adrenaline-chromzypanticin…”

“I get it,” the soldier blurted, sounding uncomfortable.

There was silence, while the elevator was moving very slowly. Somehow, Ed started realizing that it wasn’t his attending physician that the soldiers were after. It was him, and his heart started beating faster at that.

“I’m also going to the morgue, so you could show the way,” the soldier said then.

“Yes, Sir,” Hughes answered in the same flat tone.

The elevator chimed again, and Hughes started confidently going forward.

“Sir, the morgue is on the left,” the soldier said somewhat hesitantly.

“Oh, yes, Sir, just forgot,” Hughes managed to chuckle a bit but Ed could hear the nervousness in his tone.

The stretcher took a sharp turn to the left, and Ed’s body jumped a little bit against his will, so he had to shift because the pain was getting intolerable.

“Hey, I just remembered I saw something strange today,” Hughes clapped his hands and stopped the stretcher. His shadow hung over Ed, and he must have been hiding him behind. “I dunno what you all guys are looking for, not really my thing anyway….” Hughes chuckled. “I once wanted to join the army, you know, defend the country, have a real gun and learn how to shoot. But then the medical commission was all like ‘Your vision is too bad, Mr Gemini…”

“You _remembered_ something?” the soldier asked sounding impatient.

“Yes, Sir! I’ve seen that short blond boy hiding under a stretcher. He also did this with his hands,” – the sound of clapping. “Well, normally, I wouldn’t say anything about this to anyone because it’s probably just a kid playing hide and seek but you guys are searching for something, and I thought….”

“I’m sorry but which floor…” soldier started saying but Hughes continued speaking.

“And I couldn’t possibly think that all those _fine_ men would be sent to retrieve someone of such a _short stature_ …” Hughes continued, as if not hearing the soldier.

It took Ed all his self-control to not burst out.

He wasn’t _short_. Or of _short posture_. And not 4’10’’ as the soldier was describing him. He was at least 4’11’’ the last he checked. And he didn’t even measure his height while he had been in the hospital so he as well might have been 5’0’’ already…

“Ed, listen to me,” Ed looked up to see that Hughes removed the sheet that was covering him and now looked directly at him. The soldier must have left – he did sound very irritated with Hughes’ mindless chatting. “I’ll run now. It’ll be uncomfortable for you but we need to leave the hospital before they figure it out. I’m sure there won’t be so many of them next to Queen’s wing entrance, so we’ll just have to…”

“No!” Ed sat up a little bit. “We need to pick up Al too, he’s probably worried out of his mind or they already have him! We need to…”

“Someone’s coming, be quiet,” Hughes said, put the sheet back and started pushing the stretcher. “He’ll be all right, Ed. Just trust me,” he said then in a whisper.

Ed couldn’t really figure out what was happening after that. Hughes was running and pushing the stretcher, and taking very sharp turns, and all Ed could do was to lie there and tolerate the ever-increasing pain in his leg and somewhere else he couldn’t even locate and try not to throw up.

Then, Hughes stopped, and there were sounds of heavy boots marching in their direction.

“It’s you! You…” the unknown voice shouted, and then they started fighting.

Ed removed the cover and sat up, trying to figure out what was happening and who was winning, but then the fight suddenly stopped. There was only an ever-increasing pool of blood on the ground. Hughes stood up and, limping, walked in Ed’s direction.

“We have to go,” he said briskly.

“But he…” Ed started, pointing at the soldier on the ground. Now he could see that it was a young private, and the wound looked terrible, all in bright red. “We have to bandage the wound.”

“Not lethal,” Hughes said but then sighed and limped back to the soldier. “Hold on, it’ll hurt a little,” he said, now addressing the soldier.

It took him at least a minute to put something around the wound, and then he limped back to Ed, all covered in blood and in torn clothes.

“It was a shaky job. With the bandage,” Ed said once Hughes started pushing the stretcher, at the same time feeling terribly ashamed that he wasn’t able to do anything to help. Nor with the fight, nor later, with the bandage.

“Yeah, this one completely blew up my cover as a nurse,” Hughes smiled and then stopped. “This one looks nice, doesn’t it? Model A,” he hummed, looking at the bright blue car in the middle of the parking lot. “Hold on a little, I’ll open it.”

Ed melancholically observed the way Hughes was opening the car – with his knives, relatively proficiently (of course Ed would have been able to open that car much easier with alchemy but that one wasn’t an option now, and he hated it so much) – and tried not to ask the question that he wanted to ask so badly.

Al.

Hughes said to trust him and that Al would be fine, and Hughes just saved him from whatever those soldiers wanted him for. So Al must have been fine, wasn’t he? Maybe Hughes saved Al just before he started saving Ed, and Hughes now simply didn’t have a moment to tell him that Al was fine.

Meanwhile, Hughes wordlessly dragged him inside the car and took the front seat himself, and now started manipulating the cords.

Ed knew why he hadn’t asked yet. He wasn’t really able to help Al himself. He wasn’t able to walk or use alchemy or do anything, frankly. If Hughes wasn’t willing to save Al, then there was no one to save him.

But when the motor started and Hughes started driving out of the parking lot, Ed realized that he wasn’t able to sit still either.

“Hold on! What about Al?!” he practically shouted still holding for that stupid hope that Hughes already saved Al and now was simply returning for him.

Hughes didn’t even look at him, focusing on the road ahead a little bit too much. Ed knew the answer right away, but he kept insisting.

“You promised me that he’ll be all right, and now you are doing this driving into the sunset thing?” Ed said, thinking about attacking Hughes and returning to the hospital to help Al himself – if only going or walking were an option now.

He had been so stupid… He had to attend all those procedures and heal, and prepare because God knew what was going on in the city, and Al was absolutely correct when he was worried about new attacks. But no, he wanted to relax and be less tired, and puke a little bit less, so he invented that wonderful retreat in that wonderful little room where he could eat Gracia’s pies and talk to Hughes and do anything except for getting better.

“Please,” he repeated. “If they are after me, then isn’t he also in danger? You cannot just leave him there, he needs more time to heal! Just drop me back at the hospital and I’ll figure something out… He’s got alchemy so I’ll only need to send him a message.”

Hughes still wasn’t looking at him. The car wasn’t stopping, and now they were in the middle of a busy road, and they probably looked peculiar in their hospital outfits, and Hughes especially in his bloody torn uniform.

“At least tell me why,” Ed said quietly. “Why did you choose me? I’m _half-dead_ anyway, wasn’t it the most logical thing to save him?!”

The car took a sharp turn to the right and stopped – somewhere next to a residential block, a bit further from a busy road. Hughes still wasn’t looking at Ed, and now he simply tucked his head into the driving wheel, looking absolutely defeated. Ed’s heart started beating very fast.

“Is it something with Al? What aren’t you telling me?” he started but was interrupted.

“Al’s all right,” Hughes said quietly, but then he started crying. It was such an unusual sight on his big goofy face that Ed couldn’t even ask anything for a minute.

“They weren’t after Al at all… It wouldn’t look good on them if they try to convict a small boy who wasn’t even a state alchemist and wasn’t seen on the Promised Day. So he’ll be all right, Ed. We just have to transfer you somewhere to Xing probably, so you’ll be all right too,” Hughes smiled and briefly wiped his tears. “You’ll like Xing, buddy. All the spicy food, girls, everything.”

Hughes started wiping his foggy glasses while blabbing about Xing. His tone sounded desperate, and Ed couldn’t figure it out because Al was safe, and there was nothing to be worried about. Unless…

“So they want to arrest alchemists who _were_ seen on the Promised day?” he asked in a high-pitched tone. Hughes’ desperation suddenly became clear to him. “Hey, we have to go back and pick Mustang up,” Ed said, finding a more comfortable position on the seat. “The hospital is only like a ten-minute drive from here, isn’t it?”

He smiled, realizing that a perfect solution was there. They’d pick up stupid Mustang and Al, and then all go to Xing together. That’d be fun. Not because of Mustang and Hughes, of course, but it’d be fun to find all the interesting things Xing had to offer together with Al. Maybe they could even get Winry to join them too?

Hughes put his glasses back on and started the car once again. However, after a minute or so, Ed realized that they weren’t driving back to the hospital at all.

“What are you doing?” Ed asked while the car was getting faster and faster.

“You’re right,” Hughes said, squeezing the wheel so much that his fingers went white. “It’s only a ten-minute drive from the hospital. We aren’t far enough.”

“No, you can’t be serious…” Ed said and tried to find anywhere he could hold because he was barely even sitting right because the car was just too fast. “Aren’t you guys like best friends? That whole human transmutation in the middle of the Promised day was to save you, wasn’t it?”

Hughes didn’t answer so he continued.

“Why would you even save me over him? Isn’t he the only reason you’re alive? We have to go back!” Ed was practically pleading now. “You know the outline of the hospital. Besides, they don’t expect us. It’s going to be easy, General Hughes!”

“You can leave me there and at least try to see what they did to Al and Colonel, can’t you? Not that they recognized you when you were running away with a stretcher,” he continued, now thinking about maybe opening the door of the car in the middle of the road and simply jumping out of it. If only he could jump and walk or even properly crawl, he’d go back and save Al and the Colonel in no time.

“Please?” he said, looking at Hughes with the most pleading face he could possibly produce.

Hughes stopped the car and wordlessly exited, leaving Ed behind. Ed peeked out, hoping that he was about to be left there because Hughes was going to go back and save everyone, but instead, he saw Hughes stealing yet another car.

“Really?!” he asked feeling absolute outrage rising inside him. “Please tell me you need another car to go back to the hospital.”

“It won’t take them long to find out which car was stolen. We have to use another,” Hughes answered, still not looking at him. “We’ll drown this in the pond. It’ll take them at least two days to find that we stole this car.”

Suddenly, the realization hit Ed.

“I get it!” he said, smiling. “So you’re sure that Al will be all right, then we don’t need to pick him up, and he can stay there and heal… And you and Lieutenant Hawkeye are going to bust the Colonel right out of the prison, aren’t you?”

Ed allowed Hughes to drag himself to the new car, feeling strangely relieved.

“Not that I cared about the idiot Colonel anyway,” he said in a dismissive tone. “Though I can help with… planning if you need me.”

He looked at Hughes once again, losing that sense of relief once the silence lasted too long. He tried to calm himself once again because, frankly, why did he even care for the stupid Colonel? It was probably because Hughes promised that Al would be all right, and if Hughes was the type of person to not even try to help a friend in need, then who knew whether Al was actually all right.

He was on the edge of his seat and sweating – at least an hour after anyone said anything in that car that Hughes was insistently driving to the East – when Hughes finally started talking.

“It’s probably going to be a military tribunal. They need to prosecute fast if they hope to stop the rebellion, and people are looking for blood rather than truth,” Hughes said quietly. “I don’t think it’ll work out with the prison… We won’t save him before they prosecute.”

Ed gulped because then the answer was obvious. They needed to save Mustang when he was in the hospital or while he was being transferred, but Hughes hadn’t even tried to.

“It’s a simple logical decision,” Hughes said then, not even looking at Ed. “Would I exchange a hundred per cent chance of saving you for at most a five per cent chance of saving you both?”

Ed couldn’t say anything because it wasn’t alchemy – he realized recently that nothing was like alchemy, even alchemy itself; it wasn’t a matter of cold-blooded calculations, it was about friendships, feelings, and sacrifices, and the solution was _o-b-v-i-o-u-s_.

“I had to save you, and Roy wouldn’t forgive me if I chose him over you… I can’t save Roy now because they’ll most likely find you in a few hours if I simply leave you somewhere in Central. Almost everyone supports the rebellion now, and everyone knows how you look like. No, I cannot risk your life to have at most a very small chance of saving Roy.”

“No…” Ed said, feeling stupidly close to crying (and over whom?! Sure, he was this way because he was exhausted and he wasn’t sure if Al was all right, and couldn’t help anyone at all). “Please, we have to go back. We simply have to try to save everyone. Please…”

“He must have been transferred to the prison at least an hour ago already, Ed,” Ed looked at Hughes but he couldn’t even read the expression on his face, with the lenses of glasses concealing his eyes and the overall expression calm. “We cannot help him anymore. Let’s focus on saving you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who is reading this (if anyone is reading this at all :D). I'll try to stick to once-a-month update schedule because I'm personally invested in the story but I'm not sure about it yet. I have lots of deadlines coming up at work, and that's why my chapters are always so late. However, I sincerely promise that this was the last chapter with extensive chess references and any chess at all.
> 
> As for the story itself, I think Grumman would certainly behave like that because he was quite shady in the manga. Roy... He was depressed in FMA, and I'm taking inspiration from there. I'm not sure about Maes though, but I think he'd be more risk-averse than Roy because he's got his family, and he certainly wouldn't be able to risk a child's life to save his best friend. So yes, only Ed is a beacon of light in this whole drama so far.
> 
> Quick guide to chess references:  
> Roy played the most hilarious sequence of moves I could come up with in this short game (it was fool's mate followed by a modified bongcloud), but the game hasn't ended even when it was in winning position for black because Grumman decided not to deliver the mate but rather continue playing as if not noticing the obvious mate.
> 
> When Roy refers to Morphy, he talks about Paul Morphy who was proficient at blindfold chess and a great chess player in general.
> 
> And Grumman's request to play blindfold chess was actually annoying. You don't go around expecting people who are decent at chess to suddenly start playing blindfold without any preparation, so Roy's response is somewhat understandable.


End file.
